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THE 

LEADERS OF PUBLIC OPINION 

m 

lEELAND. 



THE 

LEADEES OF PUBLIC OPINION 



lEELAND : 



SWIFT-FLOOD-GRATTAN-O'CONNELL 



BY 



WILLIAjM edwaed hartpole lecky, m.a. 



' The breath of Liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not 
die with the prophet, but will survive him.' — Grattan. 



NEW YOEK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

549 & 56 1 BROADWAY. 

18(2. 






4£?6665 

W. 4 '7i^ 



fo 



i 






CONTENTS. 



JONATHAN SWIFT . 



HENRY FLOOD 



HENEY GRATTAN 



PAGE 
1 



63 



, 104 



DANIEL O'CONNELIi . . , , . 223 



INTRODUCTION. 



In KEPUBLisniNG the following sketches, which first 
appeared anonymously many years ago, I am yielding 
in part to the request of many friends in Ireland and 
elsewhere who have been good enough to regret the dif- 
ficulty of procuring them ; and in part also to a feeling 
that at the present moment their appearance might not 
be wholly useless or inopportune. At a time when the 
Repeal movement which was suspended by the famine 
is manifestly reviving ; when the establishment of reli- 
gious equality has removed the old lines of party con- 
troversy, and prepared the way for new combinations ; 
when security of tenure, increased material prosperity, 
the spread of education, and the approaching triumph 
of the ballot, have given a new weight and indepen- 
dence to the masses of the people ; and when, at the 
same time, a disloyalty in some respects of a more 
malignant type than that of any former period has 
widely permeated their ranks, it is surely not unadvis- 
able to recall the leading facts of the great struggle of 
Irish nationality. The present of a nation can only 
be explained by its past; and in dealing with strong 
sentiments of disloyalty and discontent, it is of the 



Vlll INTKODUCTION. 

utmost importance to trace the historical causes to 
which they may be due. 

There are no errors in politics more common or 
more fatal than the political pedantry which esti- 
mates institutions exclusively by their abstract merits, 
without any regard to the special circumstances, 
wishes, or characters of the nations for which they 
are intended, and the political materialism which 
refuses to recognise any of what are called senti- 
mental grievances. Political institutions are essen- 
tially organic things, and their success depends, not 
merely on their intrinsic excellence, but also on the 
degree in which they harmonise with the traditions 
and convictions, and take root in the affections of the 
people. Every statesman who is worthy of the name 
will carefully calculate the effect of his measures upon 
opinion, will esteem the creation of a strong, healthy, 
and loyal public spirit one of the highest objects of 
legislation, and will look upon the diseases of public 
opinion as among the greatest evils of the State. 

There is, perhaps, no government in the world which 
succeeds more admirably in the functions of eliciting, 
sustaining, and directing public opinion than that of 
England. It does not, it is true, escape its full share 
of hostile criticism, and, indeed, rather signally illus- 
trates the saying of Bacon, that ' the best governments 
are always subject to be like the finest crystals, in 
which every icicle and grain is seen which in a fouler 
stone is never perceived ;' but whatever charges may 
be brought against the balance of its powers, or against 
its legislative efficiency, few men will question its 
eminent success as an organ of public opinion. In 
England an even disproportionate amount of the 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

national talent takes the direction of politics. The 
pulse of an energetic national life is felt in every quarter 
of the land. The debates of Parliament are followed 
with a warm, constant, and intelligent interest by all 
sections of the community. It draws all classes within 
the circle of political interests, and is the centre of a 
strong and steady patriotism equally removed from the 
apathy of many continental nations in time of calm, 
and from their feverish and spasmodic energy in time 
of excitement. Its decisions, if not instantly accepted, 
never fail to have a profound and a calming influence on 
the public mind. It is the safety-valve of the nation. 
The discontents, the suspicions, the peccant humours 
that agitate the people find there their vent, their reso- 
lution, and their end. 

It is impossible, I think, not to be struck by the 
contrast which in this respect Ireland presents to Eng- 
land. If the one country furnishes us with an admir- 
able example of the action of a healthy public opinion, 
the other supplies us with the most unequivocal signs 
of its disease. The Imperial Parliament exercises for 
Ireland legislative functions, but it is almost powerless 
upon opinion — it allays no discontent, and attracts no 
affection. Political talent, which for many years Avas 
at least as abundant among Irishmen as in any equally 
numerous section of the people, has been steadily de- 
clining ; and the marked decadence in this respect 
among the representatives of the nation reflects but 
too truly the absence of public spirit in their consti- 
tuents. The upper classes have lost their sympathy 
with and their moral ascendency over their tenants, 
and are thrown for the most part into a policy of mere 
obstruction. The genuine national enthusiasm never 



X INTRODUCTION. 

flows in the channel of imperial politics. With great 
multitudes sectarian considei-ations have entirely super- 
seded national ones, and their representatives are ac- 
customed systematically to subordinate all party and 
all political questions to ecclesiastical interests ; and 
while calling themselves Liberals, they make it the main 
object of their home politics to separate the different 
classes of their fellow-countrymen during the period of 
their education, and the main object of their foreign 
policy to support the temporal power of the Pope. 
With another and a still larger class the prevailing 
feeling seems to be an indifference to all Parliamentary 
proceedings ; an utter scepticism about constitutional 
means of realising their ends ; a blind, persistent hatred 
of England. Every cause is taken up with an enthu- 
siasm exactly proportioned to the degree in which it is 
supposed to be injurious to English interests. An 
amovmt of energy and enthusiasm which if rightly 
directed would suffice for the political regeneration of 
Ireland is wasted in the most insane projects of dis- 
loyalty ; while the diversion of so much public feeling 
from Parliamentary politics leaves the Parliamentary 
arena more and more open to corruption, to place- 
hunting, and to imposture. 

This picture is in itself a very melancholy one, but 
there are other circumstances which greatly heighten 
the effect. In a very ignorant or a very wretched 
population it is natural that there should be much 
vague, unreasoning discontent ; but the Irish people 
are at present neither Avretched nor ignorant. Their 
economical condition before the famine was indeed such 
that it might well have made reasonable men despair. 
With the land divided into almost microscopic farms, 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

with a population multiplying* rapidly to the extreme 
limits of svibsistence, accustomed to the very lowest 
standard of comfort, and marrying earlier than in any 
other northern country in Europe, it was idle to look 
for habits of independence or self-reliance, or for the 
culture which follows in the train of leisure and com- 
fort. But all this has been changed. A fearful famine 
and the long-continued strain of emigration have re- 
duced the nation from eight millions to less than five, 
and have effected, at the price of almost intolerable 
suffering, a complete economical revolution. The popu- 
lation is now in no degree in excess of the means 
of subsistence. The rise of wages and prices has 
diffused comfort through all classes. The greater 
part of Ireland has been changing from arable into 
pasture land, for which it is pre-eminently fitted ; and 
this most important transformation, which almost con- 
vulsed English society in the sixteenth century, and 
elicited the bitterest lamentations from Bacon and 
More, has been of late years effected in Ireland upon 
a still larger scale without producing any considerable 
suffering. It is following in the train of a natural 
movement of emigration, springing no longer from dis- 
tress or from landlord tyranny, but partly from a healthy 
spirit of industrial ambition impelling young men 
to the great fields of enterprise in the new Avorld with 
which they are no longer unacquainted, and partly 
fi'om a feeling of natural affection drawing the older 
members of a family to the distant homes which their 
cliildren have established. Probably no country in 
Em-ope has advanced so rapidly as Ireland within the 
last ten years, and the tone of general cheerfulness, 
the improvement of the houses, the dress, and the 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

general condition of the people must have struck 
every observer. Ireland is no doubt still very poor if 
compared with England, or even "with Scotland ; but 
its poverty consists much more in the absence of great 
wealth than in the presence of great misery. It has 
been recently stated that while paupers are in England 
as one to twenty, and in Scotland as one to twenty- 
three of the population, in Ireland they are only as one 
to seventy-four.* At the same time industrial habits 
have been rapidly spreading. The custom of early 
marriages, which lay at the root of the economical 
evils of Ireland, has, according to recent statistics, been 
seriously checked ; and the standard of comfort is far 
higher and the spirit of industrial progress far more 
active than in any previous portion of the century. If 
industrial improvement, if the rapid increase of mate- 
rial comforts among the poor, could allay political dis- 
content, Ireland should never have been so loyal as at 
present. 

Nor can it be said that ignorance is at the root of 
the discontent. The Irish people have always, even in 
the darkest period of the penal laws, been greedy for 
knowledge, and few races show more quickness in ac- 
quiring it. The admirable system of national educa- 
tion established in tlie present century is beginning to 
bear abundant fruit, and among the younger genera- 
tion at least, the level of knowledge is quite as high as 
in England. Indeed, one of the most alarming features 
of Irish disloyalty is its close and evident connection 
with education. It is sustained by a cheap literature, 
written often with no mean literary skill, which pene- 
trates into every village, gives the people their first 

' See ' Fawcett on Pauperism,' p. 27. 



INTRODUCTION. XIH 

political impressions, forms and directs their enthu- 
siasm, and seems likely in the long leisure of the 
pastoral life to exercise an increasing power. Close ob- 
servers of the Irish character will hardly have failed to 
notice the great change which since the famine has 
passed over the amusements of the people. The old love 
of boisterous out-of-door sports has almost disappeared, 
and those who would have once sought their pleasures 
in the market or the fair now gather in groups in the 
public-house, where one of their number reads out a 
Fenian newspaper. Whatever else this change may 
portend, it is certainly of no good omen for the future 
loyalty of the people. 

It was long customary in England to underrate this 
disaffection by a>scribing it to very transitory causes. 
The quarter of a century that followed the Union was 
marked by almost perpetual disturbance, but this it 
was said was merely the natural ground-swell of agita- 
tion which followed a great reform. It was then the 
popular theory that it was the work of O'Connell, who 
was described during many years as tlie one obstacle to 
the peace of Ireland, and whose death was made the 
subject of no little congratulation, as though Irish dis- 
content had perished with its organ. It was as if, the 
^olian harp being shattered, men wrote an epitaph 
upon the wind. Experience has abundantly proved 
the folly of such theories. Measured by mere chrono- 
logy, a little more than seventy years have passed since 
the Union ; but famine and emigration have com- 
pressed into those years the work of centuries. The 
character, feelings, and conditions of the people have 
been profoundly altered. A long course of remedial 
legislation has been carried, and during many years the 



XIV • INTRODUCTION. 

national party has been without a leader and without 
a stimulus. Yet, so far from subsiding, disloyalty 
in Ireland is probably as extensive, and is certainly 
as malignant, as at the death of O'Connell, and in 
many respects the public opinion of the country |^as 
palpably deteriorated. O'Connell taught an attach- 
ment to the connection, a loyalty to the Crown, a 
respect for the rights of property, a consistency of 
Liberalism, which we look for in vain among his suc- 
cessors ; and that faith in moral force and constitu- 
tional agitation which he made it one of his greatest 
objects to instil into the people has almost vanished 
with the failure of his agitation. 

The causes of this deep-seated disaffection I have en- 
deavoured in some degree to investigate in the following 
essays. To the merely dramatic historian the history 
of Ireland will probably appear less attractive than that 
of most other countries, for it is somewhat deficient in 
great characters and in splendid episodes ; but to a 
philosophic student of history it presents an interest of 
the very highest order. In no other liistory can we 
trace more clearly the chain of causes and effects, the 
influence of past legislation, not only upon the mate- 
rial condition, but also upon the character of a nation. 
In no other history especially can we investigate more 
fully the evil consequences which must ensue from dis- 
regarding that sentiment of nationality which, whether 
it be wise or foolish, whether it be desirable or the re- 
verse, is at least one of the strongest and most enduring 
of human passions. This, as I conceive, lies at the root 
of Irish discontent. It is a question of nationality as 
truly as in Hungary or in Poland. Special grievances 
or anomalies may aggravate, but do not cause it, and 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

they become formidable only in as far as tbey are con- 
nected with it. What discontent was felt against the 
Protestant Established Church was felt chiefly because 
it was regarded as an English garrison sustaining an 
anti-national system ; and the agrarian difficulty never 
assumed its full intensity till by the Eepeal agitation 
the landlords had been politically alienated from the 
people. 

The evils of the existing disloyalty are profoundly 
felt in both nations. Nature and a long and inex- 
tricable union of interests have made it imperatively 
necessary for the two countries to continue under the 
same rule. No reasonable man who considers their 
relative positions can believe that England would ever 
voluntarily relinquish the government of Ireland, or 
that Ireland could ever establish her independence in 
opposition to England, unless the English navy were 
utterly shattered. Even in the event of the dissolution 
of the Empire, Irish separation could only be achieved 
at the expense of a civil war, which would probably re- 
sult in the massacre of a vast section of the Irish 
people, would drive from the country much of its 
intelligence and most of its capital, and would inevi- 
tably and immediately reduce it to a condition of the 
most abject misery. Nor would any class suffer more 
than the class by which revolutions are usually made. 
For poor men of energy and talent, the magnificent 
field of Indian and colonial administration, which is now 
thrown open to competition, offers a career of ambition 
incomparably surpassing in splendour tliat which any 
other European nation can furnish ; and Irishmen have 
fully availed themselves of it. Though their country 
is but a small one, it now plays no inconsiderable part 



XVI INTKODUCTION. 

among men ; for while Irish emigration is leavening 
the New World, Irish administrators under the British 
Crown are organising in no small degree the empires 
or the republics of the future. All this noble career 
for talent and enterprise would be destroyed by sepa- 
ration ; every element of Irish greatness would dwindle 
or perish ; the energies of the pf!ople, confined to the 
narrow circle of a small and isolated State, would be 
wasted in petty quarrels, sink into inanity, or degenerate 
into anarchical passions. 

These would be the consequences of the separation 
of Ireland from the British Empire. That such a se- 
verance is almost impossible may be readily admitted ; 
but still, in a great European convulsion, Ireland 
might be a serious danger to England. Even in time 
of peace its discontent necessitates a heavy military 
expenditure, and the emigration from its shores is 
multiplying enemies to England through the New 
World. In foreign policy it is a manifest source both 
of weakness and discredit. For many years English 
Liberals have made it a main principle of their foreign 
policy to advocate the settlement of all disputes 
between rulers and their subjects in accordance with 
the desires of the latter ; and the fact that in a 
portion of their own country the existing form of 
government is notoriously opposed to the wishes of 
the people supplies their adversaries with an obvious 
answer. In home politics, the presence in Parliament 
of a certain number of members who are alienated 
from the general interests of the Empire, and actuated 
by a spirit out of harmony with that of the constitution, 
is a serious danger ; and it acquires additional gravity 
as parties disintegrate or tend to equilibrium. It 



INTRODUCTION. XVH 

lowers the tone of Liberalism, leads to unnatural coali- 
tions and surprises, and is a constant temptation to 
rival leaders to purchase this support by unworthy con- 
cessions. Apart from the possible horrors of rebellion, 
the mere existence of a widespread disloyalty restricts 
the flow of capital which is essential to the full de- 
velopment of Irish resources ; and the direction of 
so large an amount of the enthusiasm of the country 
in opposition to the law, and the diversion of much 
more into sectarian channels, vitiates and debases all 
political life. At the same time a constant fever of 
political agitation is sustained. For a long time it 
was the custom to send to Ireland officials who were 
utterly inexperienced, or who, on account of their 
characters, would have been tolerated nowhere else. 
This system, which O'Connell compared to that of 
country barbers making their apprentices take their 
first lessons in shaving upon a beggar, and which in 
the last century elicited a very striking protest from 
Lord Northington,^ can hardly be said to continue, but 
an equally mischievous one remains. The Irish diffi- 
culty has an irresistible attraction to party leaders who 
desire to raise some question that may embarrass or 
displace a JNIinistry — to theorists who have crotchets to 
display or political experiments to try — to revolution- 
ists who wish to set in motion some subversive policy 
which they think may eventually be extended to 

' When appointed Lord-Lieutenant in 1783, he wrote to F&x: 'I 
must confess that it is a very wrong meabiire of English government 
to make this country their first step in politics, as it usually has been ; 
and I am sure men of abilities, knowledge, business, and experience 
ought to be employed here, both in the capacity of Lord-Lieutenant and 
Secretary, not gentlemen taken wild from Brookes's to make their 
debut in public life.' — Lord HusselVs Life of Fox, vol. ii. p. 23. 



XVUl INTEODUCTION. 

England. Writers who have never even crossed the 
Channel, and who are totally unacquainted with the 
practical working of Irish institutions and with the cha- 
racter of the people, dogmatise on the subject with the 
utmost confidence, and throw in fresh brands of discord 
at every period of crisis. More perhaps than anything 
else, the country needs repose, but, in addition to its 
own elements of anarchy, a torrent of irritating extra- 
neous influences is constantly agitating it. 

The three great requisites of good government for 
Ireland are that it should be strong, that it should be 
just, and that it should be national. It should be 
strong as opposed to that miserable system which resists 
every measure of popular demand as long as the country 
is quiet, and then concedes it without qualification as 
the prize of disloyalty and crime, and which has made 
it a settled maxim among Irishmen that the favours of 
the Government are bestowed upon every class in direct 
proportion to the dangers that are apprehended from it. 
It should be just as opposed to that system which at one 
time leans wholly to Catholics or to tenants, and at 
another time wholly to Protestants or to landlords, 
which will suffer an illegal procession in one province 
that would be rigidly repressed in another, and which 
subordinates all questions of patronage or principle, and 
even in some instances the very execution of the laws, 
to the exigencies of party politics. By such systems 
the respect for law has been fatally weakened, and their 
abandonment is the first condition of political health. 
But, in addition to this, it appears to me to be per- 
fectly evident, from the existing state of public opinion 
in Ireland, that no Government will ever command the 
real affection and loyalty of the people which is not in 



INTRODUCTION. XIX 

some degree national, administered in a great measure 
by Irishmen and through Irish institutions. If the 
present discontent is ever to be checked, if the ruling 
power is ever to carry with it the moral weight which 
is essential to its success, it can only be by calling into 
being a strong local political feeling, directed by men 
who have the responsibility of property, who are 
attached to the connection, and who at the same time 
possess the confidence of the Irish people. As in 
Hungary, as in Poland, as in Belgium, national instil 
tutions alone will obtain the confidence of the nation, 
and any system of policy which fails to recognise 
this craving of the national sentiment will fail also to 
.strike a chord of true gratitude. It may palliate, but it 
cannot cure. It may deal with local symptoms, but it 
cannot remove the chronic disease. To call into active 
political life the upper class of Irishmen, and to enlarge 
the sphere of their political power — to give, in a word, 
to Ireland the greatest amount of self-government that 
is compatible with the unity and the security of the 
Empire — should be the aim of every statesman. 

To do this is, unfortunately, extremely difficult. 
At present the very materials and essential conditions 
of self-government are in a great degree wanting. 
There was a time when the attachment of the oc- 
cupiers of the soil to their landlords was probably as 
warm in Ireland as in any other country, but a long 
series of causes, which I have endeavoured to trace in 
the following pages, have greatly diminished it, and 
the schism of classes, and the wild notions on the 
subject of landed property which have of late years 
been diffused, constitute a serious danger. The 
motives of interest that connect Ireland with England 



XX INTUODUCTION. 

are sufficient to secure the co-operation of the two 
countries as long as Irish opinion is directed by pro- 
perty and intelligence, but they are not likely to weigh 
with unprincipled adventurers, or with ignorant and 
unreasoning disloyalty. At the same time, sectarian 
feeling runs so high in politics that it is probable that 
one of the first acts of an Irish Parliament would now 
be to build up a wall of separation between Protestants 
and Catholics by the destruction of united education. 
Under such circumstances a sudden change of system is 
probably to be deprecated, and it is only by slow, cau- 
tious, and gradual steps that self-government can be in 
some degree restored. By steadily opposing the ten- 
dency to centralisation, which has produced so many 
evils in Ireland, by transferring private business from 
the overworked Parliament of the Empire to cheaper 
and perhaps more competent local tribunals, by gradu- 
ally enlarging the sphere of local government, and by 
encouraging and bringing into activity the political 
talent of the country, a sound public opinion may be 
slowly formed. Local government in Ireland, in as 
far as it exists, presents on the whole a very remarkable 
and very satisfactory contrast to the political condition 
of the country. The public institutions are probably 
quite as well managed as those of England, or indeed 
of any other coimtry. The magistracy, the police, and 
the poor-law administration are eminently efficient, and 
the comparatively small amount of pauperism is partly 
due to the good management of the latter. One of 
the latest signs of the deplorable local government in 
England has been the epidemic of small-pox which -has 
followed the general neglect of the law about vaccina- 
tion ; but in Ireland no such epidemic has raged, and 



INTRODUCTION. XXI 

the fact is ascribed chiefly to the much better enforce- 
ment of the law. One of the most important recent 
movements in the direction of prison reform has 
been due to the success of the reformatory system 
which has been established in Ireland. Undetected 
agrarian crime, the imtrustworthiness of juries in cases 
on which public feeling is strongly excited, the scan- 
dalous tone of a certain section of the press, and the 
frequency of religious or political riots still disgrace 
the country ; but the first and last of these evils have 
been restricted within very narrow territorial limits ; 
the second miglit be greatly mitigated by the intro- 
duction of the Scotch jury system, under which unani- 
mity is not necessary for a verdict ; and the general 
average both of serious crime and of vice is lower than 
in England. It would be a gross injustice to the country 
to infer that its political condition reflects accurately 
its social condition, or that the relations of landlords 
and tenants are habitually hostile. If the people are 
deficient in self-reliance, they are at least eminently 
susceptible to discipline, their natural instincts are 
aristocratic, and they are very faithful to their leaders. 
If it be true that the desire for some measure of self- 
government is not likely to be extinguished or dimi- 
nished in Ireland, it is evident that many influences 
are in operation which must tend towards its realisa- 
tion. Of the two great Irish measures which have been 
passed within the last few years, it will probably be found 
that the one disestablishing the Protestant Church will 
have effects little contemplated by the bulk of its sup- 
porters. The question was always mainly an English 
one. Since the tithes were commuted into a land-tax, 
paid exclusively by the landlords, the great body of 



XXll INTRODUCTION. 

the Irish people have cared very little on the subject. 
The Protestant clergy -were usually popular and useful ; 
with tlie exception of priests and converts, few people 
in Ireland grudged them their endowments ; and if it 
had not been for English party interests, and for the 
radicalism of British Dissent, they might long have 
continued. If, indeed, the Church funds had been 
divided between the rival sects, the conciliatory effect 
of the measure might have been very great. The 
partial payment of the priests — which a long series of 
eminent statesmen of different parties, from Pitt to 
Lord Russell, have concurred in recommending — would 
have attached the most influential class in Ireland 
indissolubly to the throne, would have appreciably 
raised their social position, and, by relieving the 
poorer Catholics of their most oppressive burdens, 
would have been felt with gratitude in every house- 
hold. If the independence of the priesthood had been 
fully guaranteed, the Irish objections to such a mea- 
sure would probably have been surmounted ; but 
English, and especially Scotch, public opinion made it 
impossible. Tlie Radicals, who desired the abolition 
of the Irish Establishment mainly as a step to the 
abolition of the English one — the Puritans, whose 
hatred of Catholicism was even stronger than their 
hatred of Establishments — interposed their veto, and 
the Church Bill was carried in a form which was of 
little or no practical benefit to the Catholics, who 
have accordingly received it with general indifference. 
But its effect upon the Protestants has been extremely 
great. They have been cut loose from their old 
moorings. The object the defence of which was a 
main end of their policy has disappeared, and they are 



INTRODUCTION. XXlll 

certainly more disposed than at any period since the 
Union to throw themselves into the general current of 
Irish sentiment. At the same time, the representative 
bodies in which the Irish gentry are learning to 
assemble to deliberate upon their Church affairs are 
forming habits which may be extended to politics. In 
spite of frequent and menacing reactions, it is probable 
that sectarian animosity will diminish in Ireland. The 
general intellectual tendencies of the age are certainly 
hostile to it. With the increase of wealth and know- 
ledge there must in time grow up among the Catholics 
an independent lay public opinion, and the tendency 
of their politics will cease to be purely sacerdotal. 
The establishment of perfect religious equality and 
the settlement of the question of the temporal power 
of the Pope have removed grave causes of irritation, 
and united education, if it be steadily maintained and 
honestly carried out, will at length assuage the bitter- 
ness of sects and perhaps secure for Ireland the inesti- 
mable benefit of real union. The division of classes 
is at present perhaps a graver danger than the di- 
vision of sects. But the Land Bill of Mr. Glad- 
stone cannot fail in time to do much to cure it. If 
it be possible in a society like our own to create 
a yeoman class intervening between landlords and 
tenants, the facilitieo now given to tenants to purchase 
their tenancies will create it ; and if, as is probable, it 
is economically impossible that such a class should 
now exist to any considerable extent, the tenant class 
have at least been given an unexampled security — 
they have been rooted to the soil, and their interests 
have been more than ever identified with those of 
their landlords. The division between rich and poor 



XXIV INTRODUCTION. 

is also rapidly ceasing to coincide with that between 
Protestant and Catholic, and thus the old lines of 
demarcation are being gradually efifaced. A consider- 
able time must elapse before the full effect of these 
changes is felt, but sooner or later they must exercise 
a profound influence oh opinion ; and if they do not 
extinguish the desire of the people for national institu- 
tions, they will greatly increase the probability of their 
obtaining them. 

L. 



THE 

LEADEKS OF PUBLIC OPINION 

IK 

IRELAND. 

JONATHAN SWIFT. 

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in the year 1667. 
His father (who had died a few months before) had 
been steward of the King's Inn Society. His mother 
was an English lady of a Leicestershire family, remark- 
able for the strictness of her religious views, and for 
the energy and activity of her character. At the early 
age of six, Swift was sent to a school at Kilkenny, 
where he remained till he was fourteen, when he en- 
tered the University of Dublin. His position there 
was exceedingly painful, and lie remembered it with 
bitterness to the end of his life. His sole means of 
subsistence were the remittances of his uncle Godwin ; 
and those remittances, owing to the poverty — or, as 
Swift believed, the miserly disposition — of his uncle, 
were doled out in the most niggardly manner. He 
found it impossible to maintain the position of a gen- 
tleman. He was precluded from all the luxuries, and 
could with difficulty procure the necessaries of life. 
2 



2 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

Notwithstanding' the extreme frugality with which he 
managed his slender resources, he was on one occasion 
left absolutely destitute, and was relieved only by the 
unexpected arrival of a present from a cousin, who was 
a merchant at Lisbon. The conduct of a young man 
under such circumstances often furnishes no obscure 
intimation of the prevailing character of his after-life. 
Goldsmith, when struggling with extreme poverty, at 
the University, lived in the most reckless enjoyment, 
spending what money he had with profuse generosity, 
disregarding as far as possible the studies of his course, 
and only employing his fine talents in writing street- 
ballads, which he sold to supply his more pressing 
wants. Johnson, in a similar position, grew morose, 
and turbulent, and domineering. He defied the dis- 
cipline, but availed himself fully of the intellectual 
advantages of, college, and astonished and delighted 
his tutors by the extent and the accuracy of his in- 
formation. 

Swift, like Johnson, was completely soured by adver- 
sity, and, like Groldsmith, he treated the academic 
studies with supreme contempt. He systematically 
violated all college rules — absenting himself from 
night-roll, chapel, and lectures, haunting public- 
houses, and in e\ery way defying discipline. He 
considered mathematics, logic, and metaphysics use- 
less and accordingly positively refused to study them. 
Dr. Sheridan (who was a good mathematician) tells us 
that in after-life he had attained some proficiency 
in the first of these subjects, but the hatred and 
contempt he entertained for it never diminished. His 
ignorance of logic was so great that at his degree ex- 
amination he could not even frame a syllogism, and 
accordingly was unable to pass the examination, and 
only obtained his degree ' by special favour' — a fact 



HIS LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY. 3 

which is still remembered with pleasure by the under- 
graduates who are examined beneath his portrait. Yet, 
even at this time, his genius was not undeveloped or 
unemployed. He studied history, he wrote odes, and, 
above all, he composed his ' Tale of a Tub.' The first 
draft of this wonderful book he showed to his college 
friend Warren when he was only nineteen, but he 
afterwards amplified and revised it considerably, and 
its publication did not take place till 1704. He also 
acquired at this time those pedestrian habits which 
continued through life, and exercised so great an influ- 
ence upon his mind. He traversed on foot a consider- 
able portion of England and Ireland, mingling with 
the very lowest classes, and sleeping at the lowest 
public-houses. The traces of this habit may be seen on 
almost every page of his writings. To this period of 
his life we probably owe the taste for coarse, vulgar 
illustrations, by which his noblest works are disfigured, 
as well as much of that minute observation, that keen 
and accurate knowledge of men, which is one of their 
greatest charms. To the end of his life he delighted 
in mixing with men of the lowest classes, and no great 
writer ever understood better the art of adapting his 
style to their tastes and understandings. To the same 
period of his life we may trace the careful and penu- 
rious habits which in his old age developed into an 
intense avarice. 

Upon leaving the University, the first gleam of 
prosperity, though at first hardly of happiness, shone 
upon his path. His mother was related to the wife 
of Sir W. Temple, and this circumstance procured for 
him the position of amanuensis at Moor Park, which he 
held for several years. 

Sir W. Temple was at this time near the close of his 
oareer. He enjoyed the reputation of a considerable 



4 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

statesman and of a very great diplomatist, and Lis 
character was in truth much more suited for nego- 
tiation than for the rougher forms of statesmanship. 
With great abilities and much kindness of heart, he 
was too languid, unambitious, and epicurean to attain 
the highest place in English politics ; and his bland, 
patronising courtesy, liis refined and somewhat fasti- 
dious taste, as well as his instinctive shrinking from 
turmoil, controversy, and violence, denoted a man 
who was more fitted to shine in a court than in a par- 
liament. He described in one of his Essays ' coolness 
of temper and blood, and consequently of desires,' as 
' the great principle of virtue,' and his disposition 
almost realised his ideal. He had, however, a consi- 
derable knowledge of men and books, and a sound and 
mioderate judgment in politics ; and his life, if it was 
distinguished by no splendid virtues, and characterised 
by a little selfishness and a little cowardice, was at 
least singularly pure in an age when political purity 
was very rare. He had surrounded himself in his old 
age with beautiful gardens, and objects of art and 
refinement ; and he dallied in a feeble way with litera- 
ture, writing in admirably pure, graceful, and melo- 
dious English, somewhat vapid essays on politics and 
gardens, on Chinese literature and the Evil of Extremes. 
With a character of this kind Swift could have little 
sympathy. For good or for evil, intensity was always 
one of his leading characteristics. It was shown alike 
in his friendships and his enmities, in his ambitions 
and his regrets. Though not susceptible to the com- 
mon passion of love, a liquid fire seemed coursing- 
through his veins. That ' sseva indignatio ' which he 
recorded in his epitaph, the fierce ambition, the in- 
domitable pride, the intense hatred of wrong, which 
he invariably displayed, must have often made him 



HIS ORDINATION. 5 

strangely at variance with his courtly patron. His 
position was extremely galling, for he was at first only 
treated as a kind of upper servant. He was shy and 
awkward, and felt, as he afterwards confessed, keenly 
a word of disapprobation from Temple. His college 
habits doubtless gave an additional roughness to his 
manners ; and the ill health, which had already begun 
to prey upon him, an additional acerbity to his temper. 
However, as time advanced, his position at Moor 
Park improved. He devoted himself most assiduously 
to study for several years, and thus compensated for 
his idleness at the University. His favourite subjects 
appear to have been the classics and French litera- 
ture ; and he read them with the energy of enthusiasm. 
In 1692 he took his degree of Master of Arts at Oxford, 
for which University he ever after entertained feelings 
of grateful regard. He also rose rapidly in Sir W. 
Temple's estimation, and hoped, through his influence, 
soon to obtain an independent position. He believed, 
however (whether justly or unjustly we need not too 
curiously enquire), that Temple's patronage was very 
languid, and he at last left Moor Park in anger, and 
proceeded to Ireland to be ordained. He there found, 
to his inexpressible dismay, that a letter of recom- 
mendation from Temple was an indispensable preli- 
minary to ordination. For months he shrank from the 
humiliation of asking the letter, but at last he wrote 
for and received it. He was ordained, and almost im- 
mediately after he obtained a small preferment at a 
place called Kilroot, in the diocese of Connor. Temple, 
however, in the meantime, had found that Swift's pre- 
sence was absolutely necessary to his enjoyment. The 
extreme amiability of his disposition prevented him 
from retaining any feelings of bitterness, and he made 
overtures which soon drew the young clergyman from a 



6 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

retirement that was as unsuited to liis happiness as to 
his genius. Swift returned to England, and lived with 
Temple till the death of the latter, which took place 
four years after. During this time he was treated not 
as a dependent, but as a friend. He was admitted into 
his patron's confidence ; his genius was fully recog- 
nised ; and the bias of his mind determined for life. 
Living with an old statesman of great experience, 
sagacious judgment, and varied knowledge, it was 
natural that his attention should be chiefly turned to 
politics. His first pamphlet — the ' Dissentions of the 
Nobles and Commons of Athens' — was published some- 
what later in the Whig interest. It was extremely 
sviccessful, and was generally attributed to Bishop 
Burnet. He had several opportunities of seeing the 
King, and some of the leading statesmen of the day, 
who visited Moor Park — of gauging their intellects, 
and correcting his theories by their experience. 

On one occasion he was deputed by Temple to en- 
deavour to persuade the King to consent to triennial 
parliaments — a mission in which he did not succeed. 
He also attended largely to literature. He assisted 
Temple in revising his works, and he defended him 
against the well-known assaults of Bentley. Temple 
had rashly committed himself to the authenticity of 
some spurious letters attributed to Phalaris, and had 
launched into a eulogium of these letters in par- 
ticular, and generally of ancient as opposed to modern 
literature. The dispute had been warmly taken up 
by Boyle and Atterbury on one side, and by Bentley 
on the other. The scholarship of Bentley proved 
overwhelming, and his opponents were at last driven 
from the field ; but Swift, avoiding judiciously all 
direct argumentative collision with so formidable an 
opponent, produced his ' Battle of the Books,' wliich 



ESTHER JOHNSON. 7 

was then and is now unrivalled in its kind. But it 
was not merely the gratification of political or literary 
ambition that made the last portion of Swift's residence 
at Moor Park so attractive. That strange romance 
which tinged all his later years had begun, and his 
life was already indissolubly connected with that of 
Esther Johnson. 

Esther Johnson, so well known by the name of 
Stella, was the reputed daughter of the steward of Sir 
W. Temple, but many persons maintained that Temple 
himself was her father, and they imagined they could 
detect the parentage in her features. The peculiar 
j)osition she seems to have occupied at Moor Park, 
and the large legacy left her by Temple, go far to 
corroborate the supposition. At the time we speak of 
she was in the very zenith of her charms. Her 
figm-e, which in after-years lost much of its grace 
and symmetry, was then faultless in its proportions, 
and her biographers dilate with rapture on the intel- 
lectual beauty of her pale but not pensive countenance, 
shadowed by magnificent raven hair, and illumined 
by dark, lustrous, and trembling eyes. Her tempera- 
ment was singularly serene, patient, and unimpas- 
sioned, admirably suited for social life, and for sustained 
friendship, but a little too cold for real love, and she 
appears to have acquiesced for many years, without 
repining, in a kind of connection which few women 
would have tolerated. But great as were her personal 
charms, her intellectual gifts were far more remark- 
able, and she seems to have lived more from the head 
than from the heart. She had read much and in 
many fields, and her wit made her the delight of every 
society in which she moved. Swift said that in what- 
ever company she appeared it seemed to be invariably 
admitted that she had said the best thino- of the 



8 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

evening-, and though the witticisms he has preserved 
exhibit quite as much coarseness as point, her principal 
extant poem — that to Swift on his birthday in 1721 — 
fully sustains her reputation.' 

I do not intend in the present sketch to enter at 
length into an examination of the controversy about 
the nature of the connection that subsisted for so 
many years between Swift and Esther Johnson. Such 
matters are perhaps given a rather disproportionate 
place in the lives of men of genius ; and, at all events, 
the object of this work is to deal with the political 
aspects of his career. There appears, however, to be 
no real doubt that that connection was always purely 
platonic. They lived in Ireland in different houses, 
except during the illnesses of Swift. Stella presided 
at the table of Swift wlien he received company. Their 
correspondence was of the most affectionate character, 
and Stella has acquired an immortality of fame tlirough 
the poetry of her friend. At the same time, that 
poetry, though indicating the affection of a warm 
friend, is wholly unlike that of a lover, and it is 
curious to observe how constantly Swift decries her 
personal beauty, and directs his most graceful compli- 
ments to her other qualities. 

But, Stella, say what evil tongue 
Reports that you're no longer young ; 
That Time sits with his scythe to mow 
Where erst sat Cupid with his bow ; 
That half your locks are turned to grey. 
I'll ne'er believe a word they say ! 
'Tis true — but let it not be known — 
My eyes are somewhat dimmish grown ; 
Por Nature, always in the right, 
To your defects adapts my sight ; 



' There is one other short poem, ' Lines to Jealousy,' ascribed to her. 



GOES TO IRELAND. 9 

And wrinkles undistinguished pass, 
For I'm ashamed to use a glass ; 
And till I see them with these eyes, 
Whoever says you have them, lies. 
No length of time can make you quit 
Honour and virtue, sense and wit : 
Thus you may still bo young to me. 
While I can bettor hear than see. 
Oh ne'er may Fortune show her spite 
To make me deaf and mend my sight ! 

Upon tlie death of Temple, Swift was once more 
thrown upon the world, but his prospects were ex- 
ceedingly favourable. Temple (who during his long, 
painful illness, had found Swift unwearied in his atten- 
tion) had taken every means of ensuring his future 
prosperity. He left him a pecuniary legacy, together 
with tlie charge and profit of publishing his post- 
humous works, and he had procured for him from 
King William a promise of a prebend either at Canter- 
bury or Windsor. 

Temple's posthumous works were rapidly published 
and dedicated to the King, who, however, took no 
notice of the dedication, of his old servant's request, 
or of his own promise. Shortly afterwards. Swift ob- 
tained the position of secretary to the Earl of Berkeley, 
who had been appointed one of the Loi'ds Justices in 
Ireland ; but a person named Bushe succeeded in per- 
suading the Earl that the office should not be held by 
a clergyman, and in obtaining it for himself. Another 
disappointment followed. He was almost appointed to 
the deanery of Down, but the appointment was stayed 
by the interposition of Archbishop King, who objected 
to his extreme youth. Lord Berkeley, as if to com- 
pensate for these disappointments, then gave him the 
living of Laracor and Eathbeggan. He remained for 
some time at Laracor in the discharge of his clerical 



10 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

duties ; and Stella, accompanied by a Mrs. Dingle, a 
lady of a veiy negative character, came over and 
resided near him. Before long, however, he was called 
from his country living to partake in the great political 
struggles of the day. 

In 1710 the Primate of Ireland sent him to London 
to endeavour to procure a remission of the payment to 
the Crown by the Irish clergy of the first fruits and the 
twentieth parts. He succeeded in his mission, and 
he, at the same time, found himself drawn into the 
vortex of politics. 

The Whig ministry, imdcr Somers and Godolphin, 
had just fallen. Harley and St. John, the leaders of 
the Tories, had succeeded them, but their position was 
exceedingly precarious. The feelings of the people 
were against them. The chief political writers of the 
day assailed them with unsparing severity; and the 
Queen had, on at least one occasion, slighted them in 
the most undisguised manner. The age, as Macaulay 
observes, was essentially an age of essays. The press 
was yet undeveloped, the speeches of Parliament were 
unreported, but yet a strong intellectual energy per- 
vaded the nation. Under these circumstances the 
writers of pamphlets, or of short political essays, like 
the ' Examiner,' were the real rulers of England. In 
the composition of these essays Swift was unrivalled, 
except by Addison, and scarcely equalled by him. 

The Whigs naturally supposed that he would devote 
his talents to their service, but they soon found that 
they were mistaken. Swift treated them with marked 
coldness. He refused, at Lord Halifax's, to drink the 
' resurrection' of the Whigs, unless it were accompanied 
by their reformation ; and he at length openly joined 
himself to the Tories. The reasons he assigned for 
this change were very simple. He had originally been 



niS CHANGE OF rOLITICS. 11 

a Whig because be justified the Revolution, which 
could only be defended on Whig principles. On the 
othei' hand, as a clergyman and a High Churchman, 
he considered the exclusion of Dissenters from Scate 
offices essential to the security of the Church, and he 
tlierefore abandoned the Whigs, who had constituted 
tliemselves the champions and representatives of the 
Dissenting interest. At the same time he more than 
once avowed, with that curious frankness for which 
he was remarkable, that personal motives contributed 
to his change. Godolphin had treated him with great 
coldness ; he had been neglected and disappointed by 
the party ; he considered that no personal obligation 
bound him to the falling fortunes of the Whigs ; and 
he met with warm encouragement from Harley and St. 
John, the leaders of the Tories. He was very poor, 
very able, and very ambitious, and his interests and 
liis sympathies tended in the same direction. 

This change, as might have been expected, has 
exposed Swift to bitter attacks from most Whig 
and from some Tory writers — attacks that have been 
the more natural because Tory principles have found 
no abler defender, and Whig statesmen no more 
rancorous assailant, than this^ former Whig. But 
although in this as in most periods of his life Swift 
acted through mixed motives, I do not think that an 
impartial judge will pronounce any very severe sentence 
upon it. It was almost inevitable that a young man 
brought up in the house of Sir W. Temple should 
begin his career as a Whig. It was almost equally 
certain that a High Church clergyman w'ould ultimately 
gravitate to the Tories. Swift, though he disliked 
William, never appears to have questioned the neces- 
sity of the Eevolution, and in this respect he con- 
tinued a Whig. Nor was he ever implicated, like his 



12 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

Tory friends, in negotiations with the Pretender. But 
in the reign of Anne, and especially after the prosecu- 
tion of Sacheverell had shattered the ministry of Godol- 
phin, the great question dividing the two parties was 
not the question of dynasty, but the question of tests. 
It was much more a contest between the Church and 
Dissent than between the adherents of rival claimants 
to the throne. The ambiguous position and divided 
feelings of the Queen had suspended the conflict of 
the lievolution, and the injudicious prosecution of 
Sacheverell had aroused a spirit which entirely altered 
the relative positions of parties. The whole body of 
the Dissenters, and all Avho desired the repeal of the 
tests, supported the Whigs. The great majority of 
the Anglican clergy, and all the classes that were 
moved by the cry of ' Churcli in danger,' rallied round 
the Tories. It may appear strange that an intellect 
at once so powerful and so irreverent as that of Swift 
should have been wedded to High Church notions, but 
the fact is undoubted, and it is an entire misrepre- 
sentation to describe these sentiments as lightly or 
hastily assumed. The ' Tale of a Tub,' which was 
sketched in college, and published in 1704, shows all 
the Church principles and all the antipathy to Dis- 
senters which he subsequently evinced. The same 
High Church principles appeared in a poem, which . he 
wrote when with Sir W. Temple, in praise of Sancroft, 
in which he deplored the condition of the Church, ' led 
blindfold by the State.' In 1708 he published his 
' Sentiments of a Church of England Man,' in which 
he describes himself as wavering between the parties, 
and aiming at neutrality, on the one hand ju.stifying 
the Revolution, on the other deploring the prevailing 
sentiments about the Church. In a letter on the 
sacramental test, which appeared a few months later, 



rOLITICAL LITERATURE. 13 

he took a still stronger part against the Dissenters, 
and to this letter he ascribes the first coolness of his 
Whig friends. He said on one occasion that he could 
not understand a clergyman not being a High Church- 
man ; and in every stage of his career he wrote steadily, 
persistently, and powerfully in favour of tests. In 
changing his side in politics he deserted men who had 
neglected and ill-treated him, but it would be difficult 
to show that he abandoned a single principle of secular 
politics, while he undoubtedly took the line in Church 
politics which his earliest writings had foreshadowed. 
No one, indeed, can compare his feeble essay on ' The 
Dissentions of the Nobles and Commons in Athens,' 
which is his one Whig pamphlet, with his later 
writings in defence of the Tories, without perceiving 
in which direction his mind naturally inclined. No 
doubt his junction with the Tories in 1710 was emi- 
nently to his advantage, but it should not be forgotten 
tliat in his later years he defended tests and disqualifica- 
tions quite as jealously in Ireland at the very time when 
lie was endeavouring to unite all Irishmen in their 
national cause. Such a bigotry is far from admirable, 
but it may at least claim the merit of sincerity. 

The principal writers at this time on the Whig- 
side were Addison, Steele, Burnet, Congreve, and 
Kowe, who were opposed by Atterbury, St. John, and 
Prior. Addison retired from the arena a fev/ weeks 
before Swift entered it, and the latter was left without 
a rival. In many of the qualities of effective politi(^al 
writing he has never been surpassed. Without the 
grace and delicacy of Addison, without the rich ima- 
ginative eloquence or the profound philosophic in- 
sight of Burke, he was a far greater master of that 
terse, homely, and nervous logic which appeals most 
powerfully to the English mind, and no wi'iter has 



14 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

ever excelled him in the vivid force of his illustrations, 
in trenchant, original, and inventive wit, or in con- 
centrated malignity of invective or satire. With all 
the intellectual and most of the moral qualities of the 
most terrible of partisans he combined many of the 
gifts of a consummate statesman — a marvellous power 
of captivating those with whom he came in contact, 
great skill in reading characters and managing men, 
a rapid, decisive judgment in emergencies ; an eminently 
practical mind, seizing with a happy tact the common- 
sense view of every question he treated, and almost 
absolutely free from the usual defects of mere literary 
politicians. But for his profession he might have 
risen to the very highest posts of English states- 
manship, and in spite of his profession, and without 
any of the advantages of rank or office, he was for 
some time one of the most influential men in England. 
He stemmed the tide of political literature, which had 
been flowing strongly against his party, and the ad- 
mirable force of his popular reasoning, as well as the 
fierce virulence of his attacks, placed him at once 
in the first position in the fray. The Tory party, 
assailed by almost overwhelming combinations from 
without, and distracted by the most serious divisions 
within, was sustained and defended by him. Its 
leaders were divided by interest, by temperament, 
and, in some degree, even by policy ; but Swift's 
genius gained an ascendency over their minds, and 
his persuasions long averted the impending collision. 
Its extreme members had formed themselves into a 
separate body, and were clamouring for the expulsion 
of all Whigs from office ; but Swift's Letter of Advice 
to the ' October Club ' effected the dissolution of that 
body, and the threatened schism was prevented. The 
nation, dazzled by the genius of Marlborough, and 



HIS FRIENDSHIPS. 15 

fired by the enthusiasm of a protracted war, was 
fiercely opposed to a party whose policy was peace, 
but Swift's ' Examiners ' gradually modified this op- 
position, and his ' Conduct of the Allies ' for a time 
completely quelled it. The success of this pamphlet 
has scarcely a parallel in history. It seems to have 
for a time almost reversed the current of public opin- 
ion, and to have enabled the Ministers to conclude 
the Peace of Utrecht. Notwithstanding his coarseness 
and capricious violence, and an occasional eccentricity 
of manner which indicated not obscurely the seeds of 
insanity, the brilliancy of his matchless conversation 
made him the delight of every society, and his sayings 
became the proverbs of every coffee-house. Among 
his friends were men of all parties, of all creeds, and 
of all characters. In the course of a few years he was 
on most intimate terms with Addison and Steele, with 
Halifax, Congreve, Prior, Pope, Arbuthnot, and Peter- 
borough, with Harley and St. John, and most of the 
other leaders of the day. In spite of the gloomy 
misanthropy of his temperament, and the savage reck- 
lessness with which he too often employed his powers 
of sarcasm, he was capable of splendid generosity, 
and of the truest and most constant friendship. Few 
men have ever obtained a deeper or more lasting- 
affection, and we may well place the testimony of the 
illustrious men who knew him best in opposition to 
the literary judgments of posterity. ' Dear Friend,' 
wrote Arbuthnot in after-years, 'the last sentence of 
your letter plunged a dagger in my heart. Never 
repeat those sad but tender words, that you will try 
to forget me. For my part, I can never forget you- 
at least till I discover, which is impossible, another 
friend whose conversation could procure me the plea- 
sure I havo found in yours.' Addison termed him 



16 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

' the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, the 
greatest genius of his age.' Pope after a friendship 
of twenty-three years wrote of him to Lord Orrery, 
' My sincere love of that valuable, indeed incomparable 
man, will accompany him through life, and pursue his 
memory were I to live a hundred lives, as many of 
his works will live, which are absolutely original, un- 
equalled, unexampled. His humanity, his charity, his 
condescension, his candour, are equal to his wit, and 
require as good and true a taste to be equally valued.' 
Undoubtedly, in the first instance, many of these 
friendships arose from gratitude. Literature had not 
yet arrived at the period when it could dispense with 
patrons, and one of the legitimate goals to which every 
literary man aspired was a place under the State. This 
naturally drew the chief writers around Swift, and the 
manner in which he at this time employed his influ- 
ence is one of the most pleasing features of his career. 
There is scarcely a man of genius of the age who 
was not indebted to him. Even his political oppo- 
nents, even men who had written violently against his 
party, obtained places by his influence. Berkeley was 
drawn by him from the retirement of college, recom- 
mended more than once to the leading Tories, and 
placed upon the highway of promotion. Congreve was 
secured at his request in the place which the Whigs 
had given him. Parnell, Steele, Gray, Eowe, Phillips, 
and Diaper received places or other favours by his soli- 
citation. He said himself, with a justifiable pride, that 
he had provided for more than fifty people, not one of 
whom was a relation. His influence in society as well 
as with the Grovernment was ceaselessly employed in 
favour of literature. He founded the ' Scriblerus Club,' 
in which many of the chief writers of the day joined ; 
he exerted himself most earnestly in bringing Pope 



HIS LIFE IN LONDON. 17 

forward, and obtaining subscriptions for his translation 
of Homer. He pressed upon the attention of the Go- 
vernment a plan (which is now, however, admitted to 
have been an unwise one) for watching over the purity 
of the language, and he on every occasion insisted on 
marked deference being paid to literary men. He 
himself took an exceedingly high, and indeed arrogant, 
tone with Harley and St. John ; and when the former 
sent him a sum of money as a compensation for his 
services, he was so offended that their friendship was 
well-nigh broken for ever. That this tone was not, as 
has sometimes been alleged, the vulgar insolence of an 
upstart, is sufficiently proved by the deep attachment 
manifested towards him by both Harley and St. John 
long after their political connection had terminated. 

During all this time Swift kept up a continual cor- 
respondence with Stella, in the shape of a Journal, 
recording with the utmost minuteness the events of 
every day. We have the clearest possible evidence 
that this Journal was not intended for any other eyes 
than those of Stella and Mrs. Dingle. It is filled with 
terms of the most childish endearment, with execrable 
puns, with passages written with his eyes shut, with 
extempore verses, and extempore proverbs ; with the 
records of every passing caprice, of every hope, fear, 
and petty annoyance ; and is evidently a complete 
transcript of his mind. In that Journal we can trace 
clearly the eminence to which he rose, and also tlie 
shadows that overcast his mind. One of the principal 
of these was the gradual decline of his friendship with 
Addison. Addison's habitual coldness had, at first, 
completely yielded to the charms of Swift's conversa- 
tion, and notwithstanding the great dissimilarity of 
their characters, they lived on the most intimate 
terms. But Swift was a strong Tory, and Addison was 



18 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

a strong Whig ; and Addison was almost identified 
with Steele, who was still more violent in his politics, 
and who, though he had received favours from Swift, 
had made a violent personal attack upon his bene- 
factor,^ and had elicited an equally violent reply : and 
these things tended to the dissolution of the friend- 
ship. There was never an open breach, but their inter- 
course lost its old cordiality, and the glow of affection 
that had once characterised it passed away never to 
return. ' I went to Mr. Addison's,' wrote Swift in his 
Journal, ' and dined with him at his lodgings. I had 
not seen him these three weeks ; we are grown common 
acquaintance, yet what have I not done for his friend 
Steele ! Mr. Harley reproached me the last time I saw 
him, that, to please me, he would be reconciled to 
Steele, and had promised and appointed to see him, 
and that Steele never came. Harrison, whom Mr. Ad- 
dison recommended to me, I have introduced to the 
Secretary of State, who has promised me to take care 
of him ; and I have represented Addison himself so to 
the Ministry, that they think and talk in his favour, 
though they hated liim before. Well, lie is now in my 
debt — there is an end ; and I never had the least 
obligation to him — and there is another end.' 

Another source of annoyance to Swift was the diffi- 
culty with which he obtained Church preferment. He 
knew that his political position was necessarily exceed- 
ingly transient ; he had no resources except his living, 
and he was extremely ambitious. By his influence at 
least one bishopric and innumerable other places had 
been given away, and yet he was unable to obtain for 
himself any preferment that would place him above the 
vicissitudes of politics. The reason of this was, that 
the Queen liad conceived an intense antipathy to him. 

' In a pamphlet called ' The Crisis.' 



HIS ALLEGED SCErTICISM. 19 

Sliarpe, the Archbishop of York, had sliown her his 
' Tale of a Tub,' aud had represented him as an absolute 
free thinker ; the Duchess of Somerset, whose influence 
at court was very great, and whom he had bitterly 
and coarsely satirised, employed herself with untiring 
hatred in opposing his promotion ; and the impres- 
sion they made on the mind of Anne was such that 
all the remonstrances of the Ministers and all the 
entreaties of Lady Masham were unable to over- 
come it. 

The charge of scepticism has been frequently re- 
iterated in the present day, and it must be acknow- 
ledged that it is not wholly without plausibility. 
Although the object of the ' Tale of a Tub ' was un- 
doubtedly to defend the Church of England, and to 
ridicule its opponents, it would be difficult to find in 
the whole compass of literature any production more 
utterly unrestrained by considerations of reverence or 
decorum. Nothing in Voltaire is more grossly pro- 
fane than the passages in Swift about the Eoman 
Catholic doctrine concerning the Sacrament, and the 
Calvinistic doctrine concerning inspiration. And al- 
though the ' Tale of a Tub ' is an extreme example, 
the same spirit pervades many of his other perform- 
ances. His wit was perfectly unbridled. His unri- 
valled power of ludicrous combination seldom failed to 
get the better of his prudence ; and he found it im- 
possible to resist a jest. It must be added that no 
writer of the time indulged more habitually in coarse, 
revolting, and indecent imagery ; that he delighted in 
a strain of ribald abuse peculiarly imbecoming in 
a clergyman ; that he lived in an atmosphere deeply 
impregnated with scepticism ; and that he frequently 
expressed a strong dislike for his profession. In one 
of his poems he describes himself as 



20 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

A clergyman of special note 
For shunning those of his own coat, 
Which made his brethren of the gowa 
Take care hetimes to run him down. 

In another poem he says : 

A genius in a reverend gown 
Will always keep its owner down ; 
'Tis an unnatural conjunction, 
And spoils the credit of the function. 

And as, of old, mathematicians 
Were by the vulgar thought magiciaas, 
So academic dull ale-drinkers 
Pronounce all men of wit free-thinkers. 

At the same time, while it must be admitted that 
Swift was far from being a model clergyman, it is, I 
conceive, a complete misapprehension to regard him as 
an infidel. He was admirably described by St. John 
as ' a hypocrite reversed.' He disguised as far as pos- 
sible his religion and his affections, and took a morbid 
pleasure in parading the harsher features of his nature. 
If we bear this in mind, the facts of his life seem en- 
tirely incompatible with the hypothesis of habitual 
concealed unbelief. I do not allude merely to the 
scrupulousness with which he discharged his functions 
as a clergyman, to his increasing his duties by reading 
prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays at Laracor, and 
daily at St. Patrick's, to his administering the Sacra- 
ment every week, and paying the most unremitting 
attention to his choir, and to all other matters con- 
nected with his deanery. What I would insist on 
especially are the many instances of concealed religion 
that were discovered by his friends. Delany had been 
weeks in his house before he found out that he had 
family prayers every morning with his servants. In 
London he rose early to attend public worship at an 



mS ALLEGED SCEPTICISM. 21 

hour when he might escape the notice of his friends 
Though he was never a rich man he is said to havo 
systematically allotted a third of his income to the 
poor ; and he continued his unostentatious charity 
when his extreme misanthropy and his extreme avarice 
must have rendered it peculiarly trying. He was 
observed in his later jeavs, when it was found neces- 
sary to watch him, pursuing his private devotions with 
the most undeviating regularity; and some of his 
letters, written under circumstances of agonising sorrow, 
contain religious expressions of the most touching 
character. 

That he would have been a sceptic if he had not 
been a clergyman is very probable ; but this is no dis- 
paragement to his sincerity. It is impossible for any 
man to throw himself into a profession without the 
habits, associations, and interests of that profession 
giving a very real, though perhaps unconscious, bias to 
his judgment. Few persons can have mixed much with 
the world without meeting men who are wholly inca- 
pable of the hypocrisy of professing what they do not 
believe, but of whom at the same time it may be safely 
affirmed that their opinions would have been very dif- 
ferent if their judgment had not been in some degree 
refracted and their natural tendencies checked by pro- 
fessional interests and habits. Swift always flung him- 
self more fully than he allowed into his clerical pro- 
fession ; and, as I have already observed, the advocacy 
of the High Church theory ^of government was the con- 
stant labour of his life. He employed his own peculiar 
talent of ridicule continually against the adversaries 
of his creed, and at least brought the preponderance 
of wit to the side of orthodoxy ; and he never forgot 
ecclesiastical interests when he was in power. He 
obtained for the Irish clergy the coveted boon of the 



22 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

remission of the first fruits. The building of fifty new 
churches in London, under the ministry of Harley, 
was one of his suggestions. His ' Proposal for the Ad- 
vancement of Eeligion,' his admirable letter to a young 
clergyman on the qualities that are requisite in his 
profession, the singularly beautiful prayers which he 
wrote for the use of Stella when she was dying, are all 
worthy of a high place in religious literature ; and 
although, as he said himself, his sermons were too like 
pamphlets, they are full of good sense and sound piety 
admirably and decorously expressed. Of the most po- 
litical of them — that ' On Doing Good ' — Burke has said 
that it ' contains perhaps the best motives to patriotism 
that were ever delivered within so small a compass.' 

It must be added that the coarseness for which Swift 
has been so often and so justly censured is not the 
coarseness of vice. He accumulates images of a kind 
that most men would have sedulously avoided, but 
there is nothing sensual in his writings ; he never 
awakens an impure curiosity, or invests guilt with a 
meretricious charm. His writings in this respect are 
wholly different from those of Byron, or Sterne, or of 
French novelists ; and it may be safely affirmed that 
no one has ever been allured to vicious courses by 
reading them. He is often very repulsive and very 
indecent, but his faults in this respect are rather those 
of taste than of morals. 

It was not till the year 1713 that Swift's friends 
succeeded in obtaining for him the Deanery of St. 
Patrick's. The appointment was regarded both by him 
and by them as being far below what he might have 
expected, for its pecuniary value was not great, and 
it implied separation from all his friends, and residence 
in a country which was then considered the most un- 
enviable abode for a man of genius. He immediately 



CHARACTER OF OXB'ORD. 23 

went over to Ireland, intending to remain there for 
some time, but was in a few days recalled by liis poli- 
tical friends. An open breach had broken out between 
the Ministers, and the Government seemed on the verge 
of dissolution. It would be difficult, indeed, to con- 
ceive two men less capable of co-operating with cordi- 
ality than Harley and St. John, or, to give them the 
titles they had by this time acquired, than Oxford and 
Eolingbroke. 

Oxford was a man of very moderate abilities and of 
very unfortunate manners. Frigid, reserved, and 
formal, he was not popular with any but his most in- 
timate friends, and his fatal habit of procrastination 
paralysed the energies of the Government. He con- 
cealed, liowever, beneath a cold exterior an affectionate 
nature ; his private life was unusually pure ; he showed 
at different periods of his career an admirable forti- 
tude under adversity and a rare moderation in pro- 
sperity ; and he was one of the most liberal and 
enlightened patrons of literature who have ever di- 
rected the government of England. Without any of 
the brilliancy of an orator, or any of the prescience of 
a great statesman, he maintained, without much diffi- 
culty, his position at the head of his party, for he 
possessed many of the qualities that win confidence in 
England, and especially among the country gentry and 
clergy, who constitute the strength of the Tory party. 
A good private character, moderate views, industry, 
and business habits weighed more with these classes 
than the splendid abilities of Eolingbroke, and a 
certain affectation of mystery, which he often assumed, 
in some degree enhanced his repvitation for wisdom. 

His colleague, and at last competitor, was one of the 
most brilliant and one of the most untrustworthy 
statesmen who have ever appeared in English public 



24 JONATHAN SAYIFT. 

life. The son of a worthless and dissipated character 
who had fallen in a duel, St. John liad been early- 
thrown upon the world, surrounded by all the asso- 
ciations of vice, and endowed by nature with gifts 
almost as splendid as have ever been united in a single 
man. With a person of singular beauty, and with a 
rare charm of manner, he possessed passions so fervid 
that neither fame nor pleasure could satiate them, and 
a genius that was equally adapted to sway a senate 
and to captivate a heart. He plunged with reckless 
impetuosity into the life of dissipation that opened 
before him, and, in an age of libertines, was conspi- 
cuous as a libertine. Yet even then he found time 
to amass stores of varied learning and to lay the 
foundation of those studious habits which were the 
consolation and the glory of his later years. ^ As an 
orator he was, by the confession of all his contempo- 
raries, incomparably the foremost of his day, and his 
writings, though now but little read, are among the 

' In one of the most beautiful of his later Essays he gives ns the 
following sketch of his habits : 

' Not only a love of study and a desire of knowledge must have grown 
lip with us, but such an industrious application likewise as requires the 
whole vigour of the mind to be exerted in the pursuit of truth through 
long trains of ideas, and all those dark recesses where man, not God, 
has hid it. This love and this desire I have felt all my life, and I am 
not quite a stranger to this industry and application. There has been 
something always ready to whisper in my ear whilst I ran the course of 
pleasure and of business, — 

" Solve seuescentem mature sanus equum." 

Eut my genius, imlike the demon of Socrates, -whispered so softl}', that 
very often I heard him not in the hurry of those passions by which I was 
transported. Some calmer moments there were : in them I hearkened 
to him, Eeflection had often its turn, and the love of study and the 
desire of knowledge never quite abandoned me. I am not, therefore, 
entirely unprepared for the life I will lead, and it is not without reason 
that I promise myself more satisfaction in the latter part of it than I 
ever knew in the former.' — True Use of Betiremcnt and Study. 



CHARACTER OF BOLINGBROKE. 25 

most perfect models of English prose. Of the reputa- 
tion he enjoyed with tlie best judges of his own gene- 
ration and of that which immediately followed, it is 
sufficient to say that the elder Pitt expressed a wish 
for the recovery of one speech of Bolingbroke rather 
tlian any lost work of antiquity ; that Cliesterfield pro- 
nounced his written style equal to that of Cicero, and 
declared that he would rather his son could attain it 
than that he shoidd master all the learning of the 
universities ; that Pope made his philosophy the basis 
of the noblest philosopliical poem in the language. 
Yet notwithstanding his brilliant and varied talents, 
notwithstanding a great tenacity of purpose, which he 
displayed chiefly in the latter part of his career, the 
life of Bolingbroke was in a great degree a failure. 
In some respects he was singularly unfortunate. The 
sudden death of the Queen, and, at a later period, the 
death of tlie Prince of Wales, baffled his calculations 
in two of tlie most critical periods of his life. The 
indecision and procrastination of Oxford paralysed his 
energies in one portion of his career, and the bigoted 
folly of the Pretender consigned him to inactivity in 
another. But the chief cause of his failure was his own 
character. It was the restless spirit of intrigue which 
led him to plot against his colleague, and to enter into 
relations with the Pretender. It was the notorious 
dissipation of his private life and the laxity of his 
opinions, which deprived him of the confidence of his 
own party and of that of the great majority of the 
English people. 

A rupture between two such statesmen was inevi- 
table. Bolingbroke occupied a position subordinate 
to Oxford in the Ministry ; he had been only created 
a Viscount when Oxford was created an Earl. His 
ambition had been perpetually trammelled by Oxford's 
3 



26 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

procrastination, and his consciousness of superior genius 
irritated by Oxford's haughtiness ; and the consequence 
of all this was, that he conceived a strong dislike to 
his colleague, which at length deepened into an intense 
hatred. It is no slight proof of Swift's force of cha- 
racter that he could control two such men, or of the 
charm of his society that he could retain the affection 
of both. Personally, he seems to have been especially 
attached to Oxford ; while politically he was inclined 
to agree with Bolingbroke, that a more energetic line 
of policy was the only means by which the Tory party 
could be saved. 

In truth, the position of the Government became 
every week more desperate. The storm of popular 
indignation, which had been lulled for a time by ' The 
Conduct of the Allies,' broke out afresh with tenfold 
vigour on the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht. The 
long duration of the war, the numerous Powers engaged 
in it, and the many complications that had arisen in 
its progress, rendered the task of the Ministers so 
peculiarly difficult that it would have been easy to 
have attacked any peace framed under such circum- 
stances, however consummate the wisdom with which 
its provisions had been framed. The Peace of Utrecht 
left England incontestably the first Power of Europe, 
arrested an expenditure which had been adding rapidly 
to the national debt, and began one of the most 
prosperous periods of English history. But, on the 
other hand, it was undoubtedly negotiated more through 
party than through national motives ; it terminated 
a long series of splendid victories, and while it saved 
France from almost complete destruction, it failed 
to obtain the object for which the war had been 
begun. The crown of Sp3,in remained upon the head 
of Philip, and the Cutalonians, who h^d risen to arms 



THE PEACE OF UTRECHT. 27 

relying upon English support, were left without any 
protection for their local liberties. Any peace which 
terminated a war of such continual and brilliant suc- 
cess would have been unpopular, and, although the 
Peace of Utrecht was certainly advantageous to the 
country, some of tlie objections to it were real and 
serious, while its free-trade clauses raised a fierce storm 
of ignorant or selfish anger among the mercantile 
classes. Besides this, the Church enthusiasm, which, 
after the prosecution of Sacheverell, had borne the 
Tories to power, had begun to subside. The question 
of dynasty was still uncertain. Tlie leading Tory 
INlinisters were justly suspected of intriguing with the 
Pretender. They were both, though on different grounds 
and with different classes, unpopular, and they were 
profoundly disunited at the very time when their imion 
was most necessary. 

Swift, on his arrival from Ireland, induced them to 
co-operate once more, and he also wrote a defence 
of the Peace of Utrecht. Having accomplished this, 
he returned to his deanery, leaving his pamphlet in 
the hands of the Ministers ; but they, being imable 
to agree about the light in which some transactions 
connected with the peace were to be represented, 
withheld the publication, and shortly after quarrelled 
again. Swift again came to England, but this time 
his interposition proved unavailing. He then retired 
from the political scene, and occupied himself in 
preparing a public Remonstrance addressed to the 
Ministers, blaming the want of harmony in their coun- 
cils, and the indecision and procrastination manifest 
in their actions. Before, however, this Remonstrance 
was published, the news arrived that Bolingbroke, 
by the assistance of Lady Masham, had effected the 
disgrace of Oxford, and had obtained the chief place 



28 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

in the Ministry. Swift received a letter from Lady 
Masham (who had always been his warm friend), 
couched in the most affectionate terms, imploring 
him to continue to uphold the Ministry by his counsel 
and by his pen, and enclosing an order upon tho 
Treasury for 1000^. for the necessary expenses of in 
duction into his deanery, which Oxford had promised, 
but, with his usual procrastination, had delayed. He 
received at the same time a letter from Oxford, re- 
questing his presence in the country, where, as the 
fallen statesman wrote with a touching pathos, he was 
going ' alone.' Swift did not hesitate for a moment 
between the claims of friendship and the allurements 
of ambition ; he determined to accompany Oxford. 

Events were now succeeding each other with startling 
rapidity. Bolingbroke had been only four days Prime 
Minister when the Tory party learned with consterna- 
tion the death of the Queen, and the consequent down- 
fall of their ascendency. Walpole, who succeeded to 
the chief power, determined to institute a series of 
prosecutions for treason against his predecessors. Bo- 
lingbroke fled from England, and was condemned while 
absent. Ormond was impeached. Oxford was thrown 
into the Tower, where he remained for nearly two 
years, but was at last tried and acquitted. Swift re- 
tired to Ireland. A few vague rumours prevailed of 
his having been concerned in Jacobite intrigues, but 
they never took any consistency, or seem to have 
deserved any attention. ' Dean Swift,' wrote Arbuth- 
not at this time, ' keeps up his noble spirit, and, though 
like a man knocked down, you may behold him still 
with a stern countenance, and aiming a blow at his 
adversaries.' The misfortunes of his friends, however, 
and especially the imprisonment of Oxford, profoundly 
affected him, and he even wrote to the fallen states- 



TANESSA. 29 

man, askinp^ permission to accompany him to prison. 
He was also at this time, more than once, openly 
insiilted by some Whigs in Dublin, and he had at 
first serious difficulties with the minor clergy of his 
deanery. 

Bub a for more serious blow was in store for him — 
a blow that not only destroyed his peace for a season, 
but left an indelible stigma on his character. When in 
London, he had formed a friendship with Miss Van- 
homrigh (better known by the name of Vanessa), a 
young lady of fortune very remarkable for her abilities, 
though not for her personal beauty. He seems to have 
been much captivated by her engaging manners and by 
her brilliant talents ; he constantly visited her house, 
and assisted and directed her in her studies. The pos- 
sibility of her becoming seriously attached to him ap- 
pears never for a moment to have flashed through his 
mind. He had a dangerous fondness for acting the 
part of monitor or instructor to young ladies of intelli- 
gence and grace. He was himself extremely little 
susceptible to tlie amatory passion, and, being at this 
time between forty and fifty, he never seems to have 
suspected that he could inspire it. He had long been 
accustomed to a purely intellectual intercourse with 
Stella, and had probably forgotten how seldom such 
intercourse retains its first character, and how closely 
admiration is allied to passion. It was seldom, indeed, 
that his commanding features — his eye, which Pope 
described as ' azure as the heavens ' — and the charm of 
his manner and of his wit, failed to exercise a powerful 
influence on those arovmd him. That spell which had 
caused Lady Masham to burst into tears when an- 
nouncing the failure of his ambition ; which had 
controlled Oxford and Bolingbroke in the midst of their 
dissensions ; which had attached to him so many men 



30 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

of genius by a tie that neither his coarseness nor ill- 
temper nor misfortunes could break, acted with a fear- 
ful power on his young and enthusiastic pupil. She 
loved him with all the fervour of an impassioned 
nature, and an almost adoring reverence blended with 
and enhanced her affection. The distraction she mani- 
fested in her studies betrayed her emotions, and she 
was compelled to confess her love. 

Up to this point the conduct of Swift can hardly be 
taxed with any graver fault than imprudence, but it 
now became profoundly culpable. It is evident that 
he had been much attracted by Vanessa, and the im- 
pression she made is curionsly shown by the increasing 
coldness of his Journal to Stella from the early part of 
1712, when his acquaintance with her rival began. On 
the declaration of Vanessa he was filled, as he assures 
us, with ' shame, disappointment, grief, surprise ; ' but 
he shrank with a fatal indecision from the plain and 
honourable course of decisively severing the connec- 
tion. He was unwilling to break loose from a com- 
panionship he had found so pleasant. He was jflattered, 
as well as surprised, at the passion he had inspired. 
He miscalculated and misunderstood the force of an 
affection he had never felt, and having always made a 
mystery of his connection with Stella, he was probably 
unwilling to divulge it. A shameful system of tem- 
porising was thus begun, which lasted for no less than 
eleven years. He appears to have attempted, without 
giving up the connection, to discourage the advances of 
his pupil, and he probably wrote the poem of ' Cade- 
nus and Vanessa ' with that end, though the compli- 
ments he paid to her charms must have done much 
to counteract the effect of his professions of insensibi- 
lity. When he went to Ireland to his deanery, Vanessa 
— availing herself of the excuse that she had property 



TANESSA. 31 

in that country — insisted, in spite of Swift's remon- 
strance, in following him. He cautioned her more 
than once, and with apparent sincerity, on the impru- 
dence of the step she was taking, but still the friend- 
ship W'as not broken. In the meantime the jealousy 
of tStella was aroused. It appears to have preyed upon 
her health, and it inspired her with a beautiful little 
poem, which is still preserved. Her prior claim was 
indis^Dutable, and there is very strong evidence that in 
order to satisfy her a marriage was privately celebrated 
in 1716. Vanessa continued writing passionate, sup- 
plicating letters to Swift, imploring him to marry her. 
He wrote in reply, sometimes with a coldness of which 
she bitterly complained. He sometimes assumed an 
air of repulsion in the interviews he still occasionally 
had with her. He endeavoured to divert her mind by 
surrounding her with society, and he openly counte- 
nanced a suitor who was seeking her hand ; but he 
never plainly undeceived her, and the strange and some- 
what unnatural passion she had conceived for a man of 
more than fifty continued unwavering and unabated. 
The death of her sister, leaving her alone in the world, 
contributed to intensify it. She retired to Celbridge, 
a secluded country place which she possessed, and there 
continued to nourish the flame. In letter after letter 
of feverish impatience she endeavoured to move him, 
and at length, irritated by his delay, she wrote to 
Stella. Stella gave the letter to • the Dean, who re- 
ceived it with a paroxysm of passion. He rode to 
Celbridge, entered the room where Vanessa was sitting, 
and, darting at her a look of concentrated anger, flung 
down the letter at her feet and departed without utter- 
ing a word. She saw at once that her fate was sealed. 
She languished away, and in a few weeks died. Before 
her death she revoked the will she had made in favour 



32 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

of Swift, and ordered the publication of ' Cadeuus and 
Vanessa,' the poem in which he had immortalised her 
love. Swift fled to the country, and remained for two 
months buried in the most absolute seclusion. 

I turn with pleasure from this shameful and melan- 
choly episode to the general tenor of Swift's life in 
Ireland. The dissensions which had at first existed in 
his deanery were speedily composed, and he carried on 
his clerical duties with unremitting energy. He lived 
in a somewhat parsimonious manner, lodging with a 
clergyman, but keeping open house twice a week at 
the deanery. He soon drew around him many ac- 
quaintances and a few friends, the principal of whom 
Avere Delany, who was one of the fellows of Trinity 
College, and a schoolmaster named Sheridan, the 
fatlier of his biographer. Sheridan was in many ways 
a remarkable character. He was the head of a family 
which has continued for more than a century to be 
prolific in genius, having produced a great actor and a 
great poetess, as well as one of the very greatest of 
modern orators. He was in many respects a perfect 
type of the Irish character ; recklessly improvident, 
with boundless good-natiu-e and the most boisterous 
spirits ; full of wit, of fire, and of a certain kind of 
genius. He ruined his prospects of promotion by 
preaching from pure forgetfulness from the text ' Suf- 
ficient vmto the day is the evil thereof on the anni- 
versary of the accession of the House of Hanover ; and 
all through his life he mismanaged his interests and 
talents. He carried on a continual warfare with Swift 
in the shape of puns, charades, satirical poems, and 
practical jokes ; and there is something very winning 
in the boyish and careless delight with which Swift 
threw himself into these contests. We OAve to them 
many of his best comic poems, and many of the most 



CONDITION OF IRELAND. 33 

amusing^ anecdotes of bis life. It was not to be ex- 
pected, however, that be could withdraw his attention 
from political affairs, and he soon entered upon that 
political career which has given him bis place in the 
history of Ireland. 

The position of Ireland was at this time one of the 
most deplorable tliat can be conceived. The irrecon- 
cileable enmity subsisting between the two sections ' 
of the people' had issued in the ruin of both parties. 
The Roman Catholics had been completely prostrated 
by the battle of the Boyne and by the surrender of 
Limerick. They had stipulated indeed for religious 
liberty, but the treaty of Limerick was soon shame- 
lessly violated, and it found no avengers. Sarsfield 
and his brave companions had abandoned a country 
where defeat left no opening for their talents, and 
had joined the Irish Brigade which had been formed 
in the service of France. They carried with them 
something of the religious fervour of the old Cove- 
nanters, combined with the military enthusiasm so 
characteristic of Ireland, and they repaid the hos- 
pitality of the French by an unflinching and devoted 
zeal. In the campaign of Savoy, on the walls of 
Cremona, on the plains of Almanza and of Landen, 
their courage shone conspicuously. Even at Eamilies 
and at Blenheim they gained laurels amid the disasters 
of their friends, while at Fontenoy their charge shat- 
tered the victorious column of the English, and is said 
to have wi'ung from the English monarch the exclama- 
tion, ' Cursed be the laws that deprive me of such 
subjects !' But while the Irish Eoman Catholics abroad 
found free scope for their ambition in the service of 

' The two religions mark the lines of the antagonism, but do not 
seem to have been the cause of it. The war was one of races, and not of 
creeds. 



34 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

France, those who remained at home had sunk into a 
condition of utter degradation. All Catholic energy 
and talent had emigrated to foreign lands, and penal 
laws of atrocious severity crushed the Catholics who 
remained. The Protestants were regarded as an 
English colony ; any feeling of independence that 
appeared among them was sedvilously repressed, and 
theii" interests were habitually sacrificed to those of 
England. The Irish Parliament was little more than a 
court for registering English decrees, for it had no 
power of passing, or even discussing, any Bill which 
had not been previously approved and certified under 
the Great Seal of England. Irishmen were systemati- 
cally excluded from the most lucrative places. The 
Viceroys were usually absent for three-fourths of their 
terms of office. A third of the rents of the country 
was said to be expended in England, and an abject 
poverty prevailed. But perhaps the most deplorable 
characteristic of the time was the complete absence of 
all public feeling, of all hope, of all healthy interest 
in political affairs. The Irish nation had as yet known 
no weapon but the sword. It was broken, and they 
sank into the apathy of despair. 

The commercial and industrial condition of the 
country was, if possible, more deplorable than its 
political condition, and was the result of a series of 
English measures which for deliberate and selfish 
tyranny could hardly be surpassed. Until the reign 
of Charles II. the Irish shared the commercial pri- 
vileges of the English ; but as the island had not 
been really conquered till the reign of Elizabeth, and 
as its people were till then scarcely removed from bar- 
barism, the progress was necessarily slow. In the early 
Stuart reigns, however, comparative repose and good 
government were followed by a sudden rush of pro- 



COMMERCIAL DISABILITIES. 35 

sperity. The land was chiefly pasture, for which it was 
admirably adapted ; the export of live cattle to Eng- 
land was carried on upon a large scale, and it became 
a chief source of Irish wealth. The English land- 
owners, however, took the alarm. They complained 
that Irish rivalry in the cattle market was redvicing 
English rents ; and accordingly, by an Act which was 
first passed in 1663, and was made perpetual in 1666, 
tlie importation of cattle into England was forbidden. 

The etfect of a measure of this kind, levelled at the 
principal article of the commerce of the nation, was 
necessarily most disastrous. The profound modifica- 
tion which it introduced into the course of Irish in- 
dustry is sufSciently shown by the estimate of Sir W. 
Petty, who declares that before this statute three- 
fourths of the trade of Ireland was with England, but 
not one-fourth of it since that time. In the very year 
when this Bill was passed another measure was taken 
not less fatal to the interests of the country. In the 
first Navigation Act, Ireland was placed on the same 
terms as England ; but in the Act as amended in 
1663 she was omitted, and was thus deprived of the 
Avhole colonial trade. With the exception of a very 
few specified articles, no European merchandise could 
be imported into the British colonies except directly 
from England, in ships built in England, and manned 
chiefly by English sailors. No articles, with a few 
exceptions, could be brought from the colonies to 
Europe without being first unladen in England. In 
1670 this exclusion of Ireland was confirmed, and in 
1696 it was rendered more stringent, for it was enacted 
that no goods of any sort could be imported directly 
from the colonies to Ireland. It will be remembered 
that at this time the chief British colonies were those 
of America, and that Ireland, by her geographical 



36 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

position, was naturally of all countries most fitted for 
the American trade. 

As far, then, as the colonial trade was concerned, 
Ireland at this time gained nothing whatever by her 
connection with England. To other countries, how- 
ever, her ports were still open, and in time of peace 
her foreiofn commerce was unrestricted. When for- 
bidden to export their cattle to England, the Irish 
turned their land chiefly into sheep-walks, and proceeded 
energetically to manufacture the wool. Some faint 
traces of this manufacture may be detected from an 
early period, and Lord Strafford, when governing Ire- 
land, had mentioned it with a characteristic comment. 
Speaking of the Irish he says, ' There was little or no 
manufactures amongst them, but some small beginnings 
towards a clothing trade, which I had, and so should 
still discourage all I could, unless otherwise directed 
by his Majesty and their Lordships. ... It might be 
feared they would beat us out of the trade itself by 
underselling us, which they were well able to do.' 
With the exception, however, of an abortive effort by 
this Governor, the Irish wool manufacture was in no 
degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned with special 
favour in many Acts of Parliament ; and it was in 
a great degree on the faith of this long-continued 
legislative sanction that it was so greatly expanded. 
The poverty of Ireland, the low state of the civilisa- 
tion of a large proportion of its inhabitants, the effects 
of the civil wars which had so recently convulsed it, and 
the exclusion of its products from the English colonies, 
were doubtless great obstacles to manufacturing en- 
terprise ; but, on the other hand, Irish wool was very 
good, living was cheaper and taxes were lighter than 
in England, a spirit of real industrial energy began to 
pervade the country,, and a considerable number of 



COMMERCIAL DISABILITIES. 37 

English manufacturers came over to colonise it. There 
appeared for a time every probability that the Irish 
would become an industrial nation, and had manufac- 
tures arisen, their whole social, political, and economical 
condition would have been changed. But English 
jealousy again interposed. By an Act of crushing and 
unprecedented severity, which was introduced in 1698 
and carried in 1699, the export of the Irish woollen 
manufactures, not only to England, but also to all 
other countries, was absolutely forbidden. 

The effects of this measure were terrible almost 
beyond conception. The main industry of the country 
was at a blow completely and irretrievably annihilated. 
A vast population was thrown into a condition of utter 
destitution. Several tliousands of manufacturers left 
the country, and carried their skill and enterprise to 
Germany, France, and Spain. The western and southern 
districts of Ireland are said to have been nearly de- 
populated. Emigration to America began on a large 
scale, and the blow was so severe that long after, 
a kind of chronic famine prevailed. In 1707 the Irish 
Government was unable to pay its military establish- 
ments, and the national resources were so small that a 
debt of less than 100,000^ caused the gravest anxiety. 
Fortunately for the country, it was found impossible 
to guard the ports, and a vast smuggling export of 
wool to France was carried on, in which all classes 
participated, and which somewhat alleviated the dis- 
tress, but contributed powerfully, with other influences, 
to educate the people in a contempt for law. In- 
dustrial enterprise and confidence were utterly de- 
stroyed. By a simple act of authority, at a time when 
the Irish Parliament was not sitting, the English 
Parliament had suppressed the chief form of Irish com- 
merce, solely and avowedly because it had so succeeded 



38 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

as to appear a formidable competitor; and there was 
no reason why a similar step should not be taken 
whenever any other Irish manufacture began to flourish. 
'I am sorry to find,' wrote an author in 1729, 'so 
universal a despondency amongst us in respect to 
trade. Men of all degrees give up the thought of 
improving our commerce, and conclude that tlie restric- 
tions under which we are laid are so insurmountable 
that any attempt on that head would be vain and 
fruitless.' ' Molyneux was impelled, chiefly by these 
restrictions, to raise the banner of Irish legislative in- 
dependence. ' Ireland,' wrote Swift, ' is the only king- 
dom I ever heard or read of, either in ancient or 
modern story, which was denied the liberty of exporting 
their native commodities and manufactures wherever 
they pleased, except to countries at war with their 
own prince or State. Yet this privilege, by the su- 
periority of mere power, is refused us in the most 
momentous parts of commerce ; besides an Act of 
Navigation, to which we never assented, pinned down 
upon us, and rigorously executed.' It may be added 
that Davenant, who was at this time the chief English 
writer on economical matters, warmly approved the 
restriction on Irish wool. 

There is one consideration, however, which should 
not be omitted in estimating the English policy at 
this period. The intention of Parliament towards 
Ireland was not puteiy malevolent, and the address to 
William in 1698 prayed him to take measures ' for the 
discouraging the woollen and encouraging the linen 
manufactures in Ireland,' to which, it was added, ' we 
shall always be ready to give our utmost assistance.' 
The reply of the King echoed the address. ' I shall do 

' An Essay on the Trade of Ireland by the author of ' Seasonable 
Remarks' (1729). 



COMMERCIAL TOLICY OF ENGLAND. 39 

all,' ho said, ' that in me lies to discourage the woollen 
trade in Ireland, and encourage the linen manufacture 
and promote the trade of England.' The professed 
intention of the Legislature was to form a kind of 
compact, leaving the woollen trade in the possession 
of England, and tlie linen trade in that of Ireland. 

Upon this compact there are several comments to be 
made. In the first place it is very obvious to remark 
that the fact of a nation having created by its industry 
two forms of manufacture is no possible reason for sup- 
pressing one of them ; and, as a matter of fact, both 
liad been encouraged by many previous Acts. No one 
would contend that because the cotton and iron ma- 
nufactures are both flourishing in England, the de- 
struction of one of them would be other than a fearful 
calamity. In truth, however, there was no kind of 
equality between the trade that was permitted and 
that which was suppressed, and no real reciprocity in 
the dealings of the two nations. The woollen trade 
was the chief form of Irish industry. The linen manu- 
facture was as yet so restricted that in 1700 its ex- 
ports only amounted to a little more than 14,000^. 
The English utterly ' suppressed the Irish woollen 
manufacture in order to reserve that manufacture to 
themselves ; but the English and Scotch continued as 
usual their manufacture of linen. In 1699, when the 
Irish woollen trade was annihilated, no measure what- 
ever was taken for the benefit of the Irish linen 
manufacture ; and it was not until 1705 that, at the 
urgent petition of the Irish P arliament, the Irish were 
allowed to export their white and brown linens, and 
these only, to the English colonies, but they were not 
permitted to bring any colonial produce in their re- 
turn. This concession, which placed one single branch 
of the linen trade, as far as export to the plantations 



40 JONATRAN SWIFT. 

was concerned, in the position which all Irish goods 
occupied to the close of the Protectorate, was for many- 
years the sole compensation which England made for 
the disastrous measure of 1699 ; and it is a significant 
fact that it was intended simply for the benefit of the 
Protestants. The linen trade had been founded, or at 
least greatly extended, by French Protestant refugees, 
and had taken root chiefly in the Protestant portion of 
the island, and the preamble of the Bill for its relief, 
after reciting the restrictive Act of 1663, proceeds : 
' Forasmuch as the Protestant interest of Ireland ought 
to be supported by giving the utmost encouragement 
to the linen manufactures of that kingdom, with due 
regard to her Majesty's good Protestant subjects of her 
said kingdom, be it enacted,' &c. At a later period, it 
is true, England was more liberal to this trade. From 
1743 bounties were given for its encouragement, which, 
though never amounting in a single year to much more 
than 13,000^., and usually falling below that amount, 
were a sign of some solicitude for its interests ; but till 
near the end of the century England reserved for herself 
a practical monopoly of one branch even of this favoured 
trade. All dyed or chequered Irish linens were excluded 
from the colonies till 1777, and were subject to a duty 
amounting to prohibition if imported to England.^ 

No one, I think, can follow this subject without per- 
ceiving how much light it throws upon the later his- 
tory of Ireland, and upon the character of its people. 
The successful prosecution of manufacturing industry 
depends not merely on the accumulation of capital and 
on natural advantages, but also and quite as much upon 
the industrial habits of the people, and these are slowly 
formed by many generations of uninterrupted labour. 
In England the principal forms of manufacture can be 

' See Hutchinson's ' Commercial Restraints of Ireland.' 



rniMATE BOULTER. 41 

traced back in an unl)roken history to the time of the 
Tudors. In Ireland almost every leading industry was 
checked or annihilated by law, and the linen, which 
was the only exception, has been successfully de- 
veloped. The same policy that was pursued with re- 
ference to Irish cattle and Irish wool was long after- 
wards shown in other fields. Thus, to omit many 
minor and partial restrictions, Ireland was prevented 
by express enactments or by prohibitory duties from 
exporting either beer or malt to England, from im- 
porting hops from any country but England, from ex- 
porting glass (of which she had begun to manufacture 
the coarser kinds) to any country whatever, from im- 
porting it from any country but England. 

These last measures, however, belong to a period 
later than that of Swift. During the time of his Irish 
career, the management of affairs in Ireland was chiefly 
in the hands of Ai'chbishop Boulter, who occupied the 
see of Armagh from 1724 to 1738, and whose corre- 
spondence throws much curious and valuable light upon 
the condition of the country. Boulter was an honest 
but narrow man, extremely charitable to the poor, and 
liberal to the extent of warmly advocating the endow- 
ment of the Presbyterian clergy ; but he was a strenuous 
supporter of the penal code, and the main object of 
his policy was to prevent the rise of an Irish party. 
His letters are chiefly on questions of money and pa- 
tronage, and it is curious to observe how entirely all 
religious motives appear to have been absent from his 
mind in his innumerable recommendations for Church 
dignities. Personal claims, and above all the fitness of 
the candidate to carry out the English policy, seem to 
have been in these cases the only elements considered. 
His uniform policy was to divide the Irish Catholics and 
the Irish Protestants, to crush the former by disabling 



42 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

laws, to destroy the independence of the latter by con- 
ferring the most lucrative and influential posts upon 
Englishmen, and thus to make all Irish interests 
strictly subservient to those of England. The continual 
burden of his letters is the necessity of sending over 
Englishmen, to fill all important Irish posts. ' The 
only way to keep things quiet here,' he writes, ' and 
make them easy to the Ministry, is by filling the great 
places with natives of England.' He complains bit- 
terly that only nine of the twenty-two Irish bishops 
were Englishmen, and urges the Ministers ' gradually 
to get as many English on the bench here as can 
decently be sent hither.' On the death of the Chan- 
cellor, writing to the Duke of Newcastle, he speaks of 
' the uneasiness we are under at the report that a 
native of this place is like to be made Lord Chancellor.' 
' I must request of your Grace,' he adds, ' that you would 
use your influence to have none but Englishmen put 
into the great places here for the future.' When a 
vacancy in the see of Dublin was likely to occur, he 
writes : ' I am entirely of opinion that the new Arch- 
bishop ought to be an Englishman either already on 
the bench here or in England. As for a native of this 
country, I can hardly doubt that, whatever his beha- 
viour has been and his promises may be, when he is 
once in that station he will put himself at the head of 
the Irish interest in the Church at least, and he will 
naturally carry with' him the college and most of thg 
clergy here.' 

It is not surprising that a policy of this kind should 
have created some opposition among the Irish Pro- 
testants, and many traces of dissatisfaction may be found 
in the letters of Primate Boulter. The Protestants, 
however, were too few and too dependent upon English 
support, the Catholics were too prostrate, and public 



MOLYNEUX. 43 

opinion was too feeble and too divided to be very 
formidable, and measures of the grossest tyranny were 
carried without resistance, and almost without protest. 

There had been, however, one remarkable exception. 
In 1698, when the measure for destroying the Irish 
wool trade was imder deliberation, Molyneux — one of 
the members of Trinity College, an eminent man of 
science, and the ' ingenious friend ' mentioned by Locke 
in his essay — had published his famous ' Case of Ire- 
land,' in which he asserted the full and sole competence 
of the Irish Parliament to legislate for Ireland. He 
maintained that the Parliament of Ireland had naturally 
and anciently all the prerogatives in Ireland which the 
English Parliament possessed in England, and that the 
subservience to which it had been reduced was merely 
due to acts of usurpation. His arguments were chiefly 
historical, and were those which were afterwards main- 
tained by Flood and Grattan, and which eventually 
triumphed in 1782. The position and ability of the 
writer, and the extreme malevolence with which, in 
commercial matters, English authority was at this time 
employed, attracted to the work a large measure of 
attention, and it was written in the most moderate, 
decorous, and respectful language. The Grovernment, 
however, took the alarm ; by order of the English 
Parliament, it was burnt by the common hangman, and 
the spirit it aroused speedily subsided. 

Such was the condition of Irish politics and Irish 
opinion when Swift came over to his deanery. It is 
not difficult to understand how intolerable it must 
have been to a man of his character and of his ante- 
cedents. Accustomed during several years to exercise 
a commanding influence upon the policy of the empire, 
endowed beyond all living men with that kind or 
literary talent which is most fitted to arouse and direct 



44 JONATHAN SWIFT. 



1 



a great popular movement, and at the same time 
embittered by disappointment and defeat, it would 
have been strange if he had remained a passive spectator 
of the scandalous and yet petty tyranny about him. 
He had every personal and party motive to stimulate 
him ; he was capable of a very deep and genuine 
patriotism ; and a burning hatred of injustice and op- 
pression was the form which his virtue most naturally 
assumed. 

To this hatred, however, there was one melancholy 
exception. He was always an ecclesiastic and a High 
Churchman, imbued with the intolerance of his order. 
For the Catholics, as such, he did simply nothing. 
Neither in England when he was guiding the Ministry, 
nor in Ireland when he was leading the nation, did he 
make any effort to prevent the infraction of the Treaty 
of Limerick. He strenuously advocated the Test Act, 
which excluded the Dissenters from office ; and one of 
his arguments in its favour was, that if it were repealed, 
even the Catholics, by parity of reasoning, might claim 
to be enfranchised. The very existence of the Catholic 
worship in Ireland he hoped would some day be 
destroyed by law. His language on this subject is 
explicit and emphatic. ' The Popish priests are all 
registered, and without permission (which I hope will 
not be granted) they can have no successors, so that 
the Protestant clergy will find it perhaps no difficult 
matter to bring great numbers over to the Church.' 

He first turned his attention to the state of Irish 
manufactures. He published anonymously, in 1720, 
an admirable pamphlet on the subject, in which he 
urged the people to meet the restrictions which had 
been imposed on their trade by abstaining from im- 
portation, using exclusively Irish products, and burning 
everything that came from England — ' except the coal.' 



THE drapier's letters. 45 

He described the recent English policy in an ingenious 
passage under the guise of tlie fiible of ' Pallas and 
Arachne.' 'The goddess had heard of one Arachne, 
a young virgin very famous for spinning and weaving. 
They both met upon a trial of skill ; and Pallas, 
finding herself almost equalled in her own art, stung 
with rage and envy, knocked her rival down, turned her 
into a spider, enjoining her to spin and weave for ever 
out of her own bowels, and in a very narrow compass.' 
He concluded with an earnest appeal to the landlords 
to lighten the rents, which were crushing so many 
of their tenants. The pamphlet attracted very great 
attention, but was immediately prosecuted, and Chief 
Justice Whiteshed displayed the gTossest partisanship 
in endeavouring to intimidate the jury into giving a 
verdict against it, but the printer ultimately remained 
unpunished, and a shower of lampoons assailed the 
judge. 

The next productions of Swift were his famous 
' Drapier's Letters.' Ireland had been for some time 
suffering from the want of a sufficiently large copper 
coinage. Walpole determined to remedy this want, 
and accordingly gave a person named Wood a patent 
for coining 108,000^. in halfpence. The halfpence 
were unquestionably wanted, and there is no real 
ground for believing that they were inferior to the rest 
of the copper coinage of the country ; but there were 
other reasons why the project was both dangerous and 
insulting. Though the measure was one profoundly 
affecting Irish interests, it was taken by the Ministers 
without consulting the Lord Lieutenant or Irish Privy 
Council, or the Parliament, or anyone in the country. 
It was another and a signal proof that Ireland had 
been reduced to complete subservience to England, and 
the patent was granted to a private individual by the 



46 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

influence of the Duchess of Kendal, the mistress of 
the King, and on the stipulation that she should 
receive a large share of the profits. 

It is impossible to justify morally the course which 
Swift took in this matter, but it may be greatly 
palliated, especially when we remember that he lived 
in the age of Bolingbroke and Walpole, when the 
standard of political morality was far lower than at 
present. The dignity and independence of the country 
had been grossly outraged, and an infamous job had 
been perpetrated, but it would have been hopeless to 
raise an opposition simply on constitutional grounds. 
The Catholics were utterly crushed. A large pro- 
portion of the Protestants were far too ignorant to 
care for any mere constitutional question. Public 
opinion was faint, dispirited, and divided, and the 
habit of servitude had passed into all classes. The 
English party, occupying the most important posts, 
disposing of great emoluments, and controlling the 
courts of justice, were anxious to suppress every symp- 
tom of opposition. The fate of the treatise of Moly- 
neux, and of his own tract on Irish jNIanufactures, 
was a sufficient warning, and it was plain that the 
contemplated measure could only be resisted by a 
strong national enthusiasm. A report that the coins 
were below their nominal value had spread through 
the country, and was adopted by Parliament and em- 
bodied in the resolutions of both Houses. Of this 
report Swift availed himself. Writing in the character 
of a tradesman, and adopting with consummate skill 
a style of popular argument consonant to his assumed 
character, he commenced a series of letters in which he 
asserted with the utmost assurance that all who took the 
new coin would lose nearly elevenpence in a shilling, or, 
as he afterwards maintained with a great parade of ac- 



THE DRAPIER'S LETTERS. 47 

curacy, that thirty-six of them would purchase a quart 
of twopenny ale. He appealed alternately to every sec- 
tion of the community, pointing out how their special 
interests would be affected by its introduction, con- 
cluding with the beg-g-ars, who were assured that the 
coin selected for adulteration had been halfpence, in 
order that they too might be ruined. The most 
terrific panic was soon created. The Ministry en- 
deavoured to allay it by a formal examination of the 
coin at the Mint, and by a 'report issued by Sir I. 
Newton ; but the time for such a measure had passed. 
Swift combated the report in an exceedingly in- 
genious letter, and the distrust of the people was far 
too deep to be assuaged. 

By this means the needful agitation was produced, 
and it remained only to turn it into the national 
channel. This was done by the famous Fourth Letter. 
Swift began by deploring the general weakness and 
subserviency of the people. ' Having,' he said, ' already 
written three letters upon so disagreeable a subject as 
Mr. Wood and his halfpence, I conceived my task was 
at an end. But I find that cordials must be frequently 
applied to weak constitutions, political as well as 
natural. A people long used to hardships lose by 
degrees the very notions of liberty ; they look upon 
themselves as creatures of mercy, and that all imposi- 
tions laid on them by a strong hand are, in the phrase 
of the report, legal and obligatory.' He defined clearly 
and boldly the limits of the prerogative of the Crown, 
maintaining that while the Sovereign had an undoubted 
right to issue coin he could not compel the people to 
receive it ; and he proceeded to assert the independence 
of Ireland, and tne essential nullity of those measures 
which had not received the sanction of the Irish 
Lesrislature. He avowed his entire adherence to the 



48 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

doctrine of Molyneux ; he declared his allegiance to 
the King, not as King of England, but as King of 
Ireland ; and he asserted that Ireland was rightfully a 
free nation, which implied that it had the power of 
self-legislation ; for ' government without the consent 
of the governed is the very definition of slavery.' This 
letter was sustained by other pamphlets, and by ballads 
which were sung through the streets, and it brought 
the agitation to the highest pitch. All parties com- 
bined in resistance to the obnoxious patent and in a 
determination to support the constitutional doctrine. 
The Chancellor Middleton denounced the coin ; the 
Lords Justices refused to issue an order for its circu- 
lation ; both Houses of Parliament passed addresses 
against it; the grand jury of Dublin and the country 
gentry at most of the quarter sessions condemned it. 
' I find,' wrote Prima<"e Boulter, ' by my own and others' 
enquiry, that the people of every religion, country, and 
party here are alike set against Wood's halfpence, and 
that their agreement in this has had a very unhappy 
influence on the state of this nation, by bringing on 
intimacies between Papists and Jacobites and the 
Whigs.' Government was exceedingly alarmed. Wal- 
pole had already recalled the Duke of Grafton, whom 
he described as ' a fair-weather pilot, that did not 
know how to act when the first storm arose ; ' but Lord 
Carteret, who succeeded him as Lord Lieutenant, was 
equally unable to quell the agitation. A reward of 
300^. was offered in vain for the discovery of the author 
of the Fourth Letter. A prosecution was instituted 
against the printer ; but the grand jury refused to find 
the bill, and persisted in their refusal, notwithstanding 
the violent and indecorous conduct of Chief Justice 
Whiteshed. The feeling of the people grew daily 
stronger, and at last Walpole was compelled to yield 
and withdraw the patent. 



HIS STYLE. 49 

Such were the circumstances of this memorable 
contest — a contest which has been deservedly placed in 
the foremost ranks in the annals of Ireland. There is 
no more momentous epoch in the history of a nation than 
that in which the voice of the people has first spoken, 
and spoken with success. It marks the transition from 
an age of semi-barbarism to an age of civilisation — 
from the government of force to the government of 
opinion. Before this time rebellion was the natural 
issue of every patriotic effort in Ireland. Since then 
rebellion has been an anachronism and a mistake. 
The age of Desmond and of O'Neil had passed. The 
age of Grattan and of O'Connell had begun. 

Swift was admirably calculated to be the leader of 
public opinion in Ireland, from his complete freedom 
from the characteristic defects of the Irish tempera- 
ment. His writings exhibit no tendency to exaggera- 
tion or bombast ; no fallacious images or far-fetched 
analogies ; no tumid phrases in which the expression 
hangs loosely and inaccurately around the meaning. 
His style is always clear, keen, nervous, and exact. 
He delights in the most homely Saxon, in the simplest 
and most unadorned sentences. His arguments are so 
plain that the weakest mind can grasp them, yet so 
logical that it is seldom possible to evade their force. 
Even his fictions exhibit everywhere his antipathy to 
vagueness and mystery. As Emerson observes, ' He 
describes his characters as if for the police-court.' It 
has been often remarked that his very wit is a species 
of argument. He starts from one ludicrous conception, 
such as the existence of minute men, or the suitability 
of children for food, and he proceeds to examine that 
conception in every aspect ; to follow it out to all its 
consequences ; and to derive from it, systematically and 
consistently, a train of the most grotesque incidents. He 
4 



50 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

seeks to reduce everything to its most practical form, 
and to its simplest expression, and sometimes affects 
not even to understand inflated language. It is 
curious to observe an Irishman, when addressing the 
Irish people, laying hold of a careless expression attri- 
buted to Walpole — that he would pour the coin down 
the throats of the nation — and arguing gravely that 
the difficulties of such a course would be insuperable. 
This shrewd, practical, unimpassioned tone was espe- 
cially needed in Ireland. To employ Swift's own image, 
it was a medicine well suited to correct the weaknesses 
of the national character. 

After the ' Drapier's Letters,' Swift published several 
minor pieces on Irish affairs, but most of them are 
very inconsiderable. The principal is his ' Short View 
of the State of Ireland,' published in 1727, in which 
he enumerated fourteen causes of a nation's prosperity, 
and showed in how many of these Ireland was deficient. 
He also brought forward the condition of the country 
indirectly, in his amusing proposal for employing 
children for food — a proposal which a French writer is 
said to have taken literally, and to have gravely ad- 
duced as a proof of the wretched condition of the 
Irish. His influence with the people, after the ' Dra- 
pier's Letters,' was unbounded. Walpole once spoke 
of having him arrested, and was asked whether he had 
ten thousand men to spare, for they would be needed 
for the enterprise. ' When Serjeant Bettesworth, an 
eminent lawyer whom Swift had fiercely satirised, 
threatened him with personal violence, the people vo- 
luntarily formed a guard for his protection. When 
Primate Boulter accused him of exciting the people, 
he retorted, with scarcely an exaggeration, ' If I were 
only to lift my finger, you would be torn to pieces.' 
We have a curious proof of the extent of his reputation 



HIS rOPULARITy. 51 

in a letter written by Voltaire, then a very young man, 
requesting liim to procure subscriptions in Ireland for 
the ' Henriade' — a request with which Swift complied, 
tliough he had always refused to publish his own works 
by subscription. 

There are few things in the Irish history of the last 
century more touching than the constancy with which 
the people clung to their old leader, even at a time 
when his faculties had wholly decayed ; and, notwith- 
standing his creed, his profession, and his intolerance, 
the name of Swift was for many generations the most 
universally popular in Ireland. He first taught the 
Irish people to rely upon themselves. He led them 
to victory at a time when long oppression and the 
expatriation of all the energy of the country had 
deprived them of every hope. He gave a voice to 
their mute sufferings, and traced the lines of their 
future progress. The cause of free trade and the cause 
of legislative independence never again passed out of 
the minds of Irishmen, and the non-importation agree- 
ment of 1779, and the legislative emancipation of 
1782, were the development of his policy. The street 
ballads which he delighted in writing, the homely, 
transparent nature of all his pamphlets, and the pe- 
culiar vein of rich humour which pervaded them, 
extended his influence to the very lowest class. It 
is related of him that he once gave a guinea to a 
maid-servant to buy a new gown, with the characteristic 
injunction that it should be of Irish stuff. When he 
afterwards reproached her with not having complied 
with his injunction, she brought him his own volumes, 
which she had purchased, saying they were the best 
' Irish stuff' she knew. 

But, in spite of all this popularity, Ireland never 
ceased to be a land of exile to him ; and he more than 



52 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

once tried to obtain some English preferment instead 
of his deanery. With this object, on the death of 
George I., he made an assiduous court to Mrs. Howard, 
the mistress of the new Sovereign, but soon found that 
she possessed no real power. The presence of Pope 
and Bolingbroke, whom he most truly loved, as well 
as the wider sphere of ambition it furnished, drew his 
affections to England, and a number of causes made 
Ireland peculiarly painful to him. He was engaged 
towards the close of his life in a multitude of eccle- 
siastical disputes, into the details of which it is not 
necessary to enter. He strenuously opposed Bills for 
commuting the tithes of flax and hemp, for preventing 
the settlement of landed property on the Church or on 
public charities, for enlarging the power of the bishops 
in granting leases, and for relieving pasture land from 
the payment of tithes ; and the first three Bills were 
ultimately rejected. He was also on very bad terms 
with the bishops, who were always strong Whigs, and 
who represented the Church and State policy to which 
he' was most opposed. His judgment of them he ex- 
pressed with his usual emphasis. ' Excellent and moral 
men had been selected upon every occasion of vacancy. 
But it unfortunately has uniformly happened that as 
these worthy divines crossed Hounslow Heath on their 
road to Ireland, to take possession of their bishoprics, 
they have been regularly robbed and murdered by the 
highwaymen frequenting that common, who seize upon 
their robes and patents, come over to Ireland, and are 
consecrated bishops in their stead.' 

In 1726 he paid a visit to England, after an absence 
of twelve years. He was introduced to Walpole, who 
received him with marked civility, and whom he en- 
deavoured to interest, both directly and through the 
medium of Peterborough, in Irish affairs. He also 



DEATH OF STELLA. 53 

revisited his old friends Pope and Bolingbroke, but was 
soon recalled by the news that Stella was dying. He 
returned in haste, scarcely expecting to find her alive. 
' I have been long weary,' he wrote, ' of the world, and 
shall, for my small remainder of years, be weary of 
life, having for ever lost that conversation which could 
alone make it tolerable.' Stella, however, lingered till 
1728. The close of her life was in keeping with the 
rest, involved in circumstances of mystery and obscu- 
rity ; and an anecdote is related concerning it which, 
if it be accepted, would leave a very deep stain on the 
memory of Swift. The younger Sheridan states, on 
the authority of his father, that a few days before her 
death, Stella, in the presence of Sheridan, adjured 
Swift to acknowledge the marriage that had previously 
taken place between them, to save her reputation from 
posthumous slander, and to grant her the consolation 
of dying his admitted wife. He adds that Swift made 
no reply, but walked silently out of the room, and 
never saw her again during the few days that she lived, 
that she was thrown by his behaviour into unspeakable 
agonies of disappointment, inveighed bitterly against 
his cruelty, and then sent for a lawyer and bequeathed 
her property, in the presence of Sheridan, to chari- 
table purposes. But high as is the authority for this 
anecdote, there are serious reasons for questioning 
its accuracy. The book in which it appeared was only 
published fifty years after the time, and its author was 
a boy when his father died. It appears from the extant 
will that it was drawn up, not a ' few days,' but a full 
month before the death of the testator, and at a time 
when she was so far from regarding herself as on the 
point of death that she described herself as in ' toler- 
able health of body,' left a legacy to one of her 
servants if he shoidd be alive and in her service at 



54 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

the time of her death, and another to the poor of the 
parish in which she may happen to die. It is certain 
that the disposition of her property was no sudden 
resolution, and it is equally certain that it was not 
made contrary to the wishes of Swift, for a letter by 
him exists which was written a year earlier, in which 
he expresses a strong desire that she could be induced 
to make her will, and states her intentions about her 
property in the exact words which she subsequently 
employed. On money matters, as we have seen. Swift 
was very disinterested, and it is not surprising that he 
who had refused to marry Vanessa notwithstanding her 
large fortune, should have advised Stella to bequeath 
her property in charity. The terms of agonising sorrow 
and intense affection in which he at this time wrote 
about her, and the entire absence of any known reason 
why he should not have avowed the marriage had she 
desired it, make the alleged act of harshness very im- 
probable ; and it may be added that the will contains a 
bequest to Swift of a box of papers, and of a bond for 
thirty pounds. The bulk of her property she beqeathed, 
as Swift two years before had intimated, to Steevens 
Hospital, after the death of her mother and sister, to 
revert to her nearest relative in case of the disesta- 
blishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland. It is 
remarkable that Swift provided for the same contin- 
gency in the case of some tithes which he purchased 
when at Laracor, and left to his descendants. Her 
body, in accordance with the desire expressed in her 
will, was buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral. 

In addition to the anecdote I have mentioned, there 
is another related about the last hours of Stella wliich 
is not very consistent with the former one. Mrs. 
Whiteway, the niece of Swift, informed one of his 
relations that Stella was carried shortly before her 



HIS CONNECTION WITH STELLA. 55 

death to the deanery, and being very feeble was laid 
upon a bed, while Swift sat by the side, holding her 
liand and addressing her in the most affectionate terms. 
Mrs. Wliiteway, out of delicacy, and being unwilling 
to overhear their conversation, withdrew into another 
room, but she could not help hearing two broken 
sentences. Swift said in an audible tone, ' Well, my 
dear, if you wish it, it shall be owned ; ' to which Stella 
answered, with a sigh, ' It is too late ; ' and it is as- 
sumed that these words referred to the marriage. On 
the whole, there is no decisive evidence that Stella 
ever complained in her later years of her relations with 
Swift, or that she suffered from any unhappiness after 
the death of Miss Vanhomrigh, nor does Swift ever 
appear during her lifetime to have been accused of 
harshness to her. The common belief that her death 
was caused or hastened by unrequited love appears 
entirely destitute of foundation, and is itself almost 
absui'd. "When Stella died she was forty-seven and 
Swift was sixty-one, and their connection had been 
unbroken for many years. 

It is difficult or impossible to unravel the motives 
which may have induced Swift to prefer a Platonic 
marriage to that of ordinary men, but some of them, 
at least, lie on the surface. He was at first nervously 
afx-aid of producing a family upon narrow means ; he 
had in all things a strong bias towards singularity; 
and he appears to have been absolutely insensible to 
the passion of love, while he was extremely susceptible 
to the charms of friendship. These reasons may have 
at first led to the connection, and the force of habit 
and the failing health both of himself and of Stella, 
may have made him unwilling, when he grew richer, to 
change his habits of life. It is probable, too, as Sir 
W. Scott has suggested, that some physical cause con- 



56 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

tributed to his decision. He rarely saw Stella except 
in presence of a third person, and carefully avoided all 
occasion of scandal ; but she did the honours of his 
table, though only in the capacity of a guest, on his 
days of public reception. Her somewhat cold tempe- 
rament and eminently decorous manners appear to 
have fallen in well with the arrangement, and there is 
no evidence of any scandal having been aroused. There 
is little doubt that she was married to Swift twelve 
years before her death, but she retained the name of 
Johnson to the last, and it is still engraven upon her 
tomb.' 

But whatever may have been the relation subsisting 
between Stella and Swift, it is plain that when she 
died the death-knell of his happiness had struck. ' For 
my part,' he wrote to one of his friends just before the 
event took place, 'as I value life very little, so the 
poor casual remains of it after such a loss, would be a 
burden that I most heartily beg God Almighty to 
enable me to bear ; and I think there is not a greater 
folly than that of entering into too strict and parti- 
cular a friendship, with the loss of which a man must 
be absolutely miserable, but especially at an age when 
it is too late to engage in a new friendship.' That 
morbid melancholy to which he had ever been subject 
assumed a darker hue and a more unremitting sway as 
the shadows began to lengthen upon his path. It 
had appeared very , vividly in ' Grulliver's Travels,' 
which were published as early as 1726, and which, 
perhaps, of all his works, exhibits most frequently his 
idiosyncrasies and his sentiments. We find his old 
hatred of mathematics displayed in the history of 

' The Stella mystery has been discussed by all the biographers of 
Swift, but I must especially acknowledge my obligations to the singularly 
interesting volume of Dr. Wilde on ' The Last Days of Swift.' 



HIS MELANCHOLY. 57 

Laputa ; his devotion to his disgraced friends, in the 
attempt to cast ridicule on the evidence on which 
Atterbury was condemned ; his antipathy to Sir Isaac 
Newton, whose habitual absence of mind is said to have 
suggested the flappers ; as well as allusions to Sir E. 
Walpole, to the doubtful policy of the Prince of Wales, 
to the antipathy Queen Anne had conceived against 
him on account of the indecorous manner in which he 
had defended the Church, and to a number of other 
political events of liis time. We find, above all, his 
deep-seated contempt for mankind in his picture of the 
Yahoos. His view of human nature perhaps differs 
little from that professed by a large religious school in 
the present day, but with Swift it was no figure of 
speech, no mere pulpit dogma, but a deeply realised 
fact. Living in one of the most hollow, heartless, and 
sceptical ages that England had ever known, embittered 
by disappointment and ill-health, and separated by 
death or by his position from all whom he most deeply 
loved, he learnt to look with a contempt which is 
often displayed in ' Gulliver ' upon the contests in 
which so much of his life had been expended, and his 
naturally stern, gloomy, and foreboding nature dark- 
ened into an intense misanthropy. He cast a retro- 
spect over his life, and his deliberate opinion seems to 
have been that man was hopelessly corrupt, that the 
evil preponderates over the good, and that life itself 
is a curse. He appears to have adopted, as far as this 
world is concerned, the sentiment of his friend Boling- 
broke, that there is so much trouble in entering it, and 
so much in leaving it, that it is scarcely worth while 
being here at all. 

Age had begun to press heavily upon him, and age 
he had ever regarded as the greatest of human ills. 
In his picture of the ' Immortals ' he had painted ita 



58 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

attendant evils as they had never been painted before. 
He had ridiculed the reverence paid to the old, as 
resembling that which the vulgar pay to comets, for 
their beards and their pretensions to foretell the future. 
He had predicted that, like the blasted tree, he would 
himself die first at the top. Those whom he had 
valued the most had almost all preceded him to the 
tomb. Oxford, Arbuthnot, Peterborough, Gay, Lady 
Masham, and Eowe, had one by one dropped off. Of 
all that brilliant company who had surrounded him in 
the days of his power, Pope and Bolingbroke alone 
remained ; and Pope was sinking under continued ill- 
ness, and Bolingbroke was drawing his last breath in 
the more congenial atmosphere of France. Sheridan 
had gone with broken fortunes to a school at Cavan ; 
Stella had left no successor. His niece, Mrs. White- 
way, watched over him with unwearied kindness, but 
she could not supply the place of those who had gone. 
He looked forward to death without terror and with- 
out pain, but his mind quailed at the prospect of the 
dotage and the decrepitude that precedes it. He had 
seen the greatest general and the greatest lawyer of 
his day sink into a second childhood, and he felt that 
the fate of Marlborough and of Somers would at last 
be his own. A large mirror once fell to the ground in 
the room where he was standing. A friend observed 
how nearly it had killed him. ' Would to Grod,' he 
exclaimed, 'that it had!' His mind at length gave 
way. His flashes of wit became fewer and fewer, and 
he gradually sank into a condition approaching imbeci- 
lity, while at the same time his passions became wholly 
ungovernable. He constantly broke into paroxysms of 
the wildest fury, into outbursts that were scarcely dis- 
tinguishable from insanity. Avarice, the common vice 
of the old, came upon him with a fearful power. He 
had lost his friends, his talents, and his health, and he 



HIS DEATH. . 59 

clung with desperate tenacity to naoney, tlie only thing 
that remained. He shrank from all hospitality, from 
all luxm-ies, from every expense that it was possible to 
avoid. Yet even at this time he refused a considerable 
sum which was offered him to renew a lease on terms 
that would be disadvantageous to his successors. 

At length the evil day arrived. A tumour, accom- 
panied by the most excruciating pain, arose over one 
of his eyes. For a month he never gained a moment 
of repose. For a week he was with difficulty restrained 
by force from tearing out his eye. The agony was too 
great for human endurance. It subsided at last, but 
his mind had wholly ebbed away. It was not mad- 
ness ; it was absolute idiocy that ensued. He remained 
passive in the hands of his attendants without speak- 
ing, or moving, or betraying the slightest emotion. 
Once, indeed, when some one spoke of the illumina- 
tions by which the people were celebrating the anniver- 
sary of his birthday, lie muttered, ' It is all folly ; they 
had better leave it alone.' Occasionally he endea- 
voured to rouse himself from his torpor, but could not 
find words to form a sentence, and with a deep sigh he 
relapsed into his former condition. It was not till 
he had continued in this state for two years that he 
exchanged the sleep of idiocy for the sleep of death. 

He died in 1 747, and was buried near the grave of 
Stella, in his own cathedral, where the following very 
characteristic epitaph, written by himself, marks his 
grave : 

HIC DEPOSITUM EST CORPUS 

JONATHAN SWIFT, S. T. P. 

HUJUS ECCLESIJE CATHEDEALIS 

DECANI. 

TBI SiEVA INDIGNATIO 

COR ULTEKIUS LACERAEE NEQUIT. 

ABI VIATOR, 

ET IMITAEE SI POTERIS, 

STBBNTJUM PRO VIRIXI LIBEETATIS VINDICATOREM. 



60. JONATHAN SWIFT. 

His property he left to build a madhouse. It would 
seem as though he were guided in his determination 
by an anticipation of his own fate. He himself assigned 
another reason. He says in his poem on his own 
death : 

He left the little wealth he had 
To build a house for fools and mad, 
To show by one satiric touch 
No nation needed it so much. 

The reputation of Swift has suffered from a variety 
of causes. Politically, he was the founder of an Irish 
movement which English writers treat, for the most 
part, with ridicule and contempt, and perhaps the 
greatest writer of an English party which has steadily 
been declining. He had also, like so many great men, 
the misfortune of reckoning among his acquaintances 
one of those vain and meddling fools who try to win a 
literary reputation by chronicling the weaknesses of 
great men. The ' Kecollections of Lord Orrery ' have 
furnished materials for much posthumous detraction ; 
and the extreme coarseness of the writings of Swift, 
as well as the many repulsive and unamiable features of 
his character, have given great scope for the censures 
of the party writer or of the popular moralist. 

In truth, the nature of Swift was one of those which 
neither seek nor obtain the sympathy of ordinary men. 
Through his whole life his mind was positively dis- 
eased, and circumstances singularly galling to a great 
genius and a sensitive nature combined to aggravate 
his malady. Educated in poverty and neglect, passing 
then under the yoke of an uncongenial patron and of 
an unsuitable profession, condemned during his best 
years to offices that were little more than menial, con- 
signed after a brief period of triumph to life-long exile 
in a torpid country, separated from all his friends and 



HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS. 61 

baffled in all his projects, he learned to realise the 
bitterness of great powers with no adequate sphere 
for their display — of a great genius passed in every 
walk of worldly ambition by inferior men. His cha- 
racter was softened and improved by prosperity, but 
it became acrid and virulent in adversity. Hating 
hypocrisy, he often threw himself into the opposite 
extreme, and concealed his virtues as other men 
their vices. Possessing powers of satire perhaps as 
terrible as have ever been granted to a human being, 
he employed them sometimes in lashing impostors 
like Partridge, or arrogant lawyers like Bettesworth, 
but very often in unworthy personal or political quar- 
rels. He flung himself unreservedly into party war- 
fare, and was often exceedingly unscrupulous about 
the means he employed ; and there is at least one deep 
stain on his private character ; but he was capable of a 
very genuine patriotism, of an intense hatred of injus- 
tice, of splendid acts of generosity, of a most ardent 
and constant friendship, and it may be truly said that 
it was those who knew him best who admired him 
most. He was also absolutely free from those literary 
jealousies which were so common among his contempo- 
raries, and from the levity and shallowness of thought 
and character that were so characteristic of his time. 

Of the intellectual grandeur of his career it is need- 
less to speak. The chief sustainer of an English 
Ministry, the most powerful advocate of the Peace of 
Utrecht, the creator of public opinion in Ireland, he 
has graven his name indelibly in English history, and 
his writings, of their own kind, are unique in English 
literature. It has been the misfortune of Pope to 
produce a number of imitators, who made his versifica- 
tion so hackneyed that they produced a reaction against 
his poetry in which it is often most unduly underrated. 



62 JONATHAN S-WIFT. 

Addison, though always read with pleasure, has lost 
much of his old supremacy. A deeper criticism, a more 
nervous and stimulating school of political writers 
have made much that he wrote appear feeble and 
superficial, and even in his own style it would be 
possible to produce passages in the writings of Grold- 
smith and Lamb that might be compared without 
disadvantage with the best papers of the 'Spectator.' 
But the position of Swift is unaltered. ' Gulliver ' 
and the ' Tale of a Tub ' remain isolated productions, 
unrivalled, unimitated, and inimitable. 



HENRY FLOOD, 

The efforts of Swift had created a public opinion in 
Ireland, but had not provided for its continuance. A 
splendid example had been given, and the principles 
of liberty had been triumphantly asserted, but there 
was no permanent organ to retain and transmit the 
national sentiment. The Irish Parliament, which 
seemed specially intended for this purpose, had never 
been regarded with favour by Swift. He had satirised 
it bitterly as the Legion Club — 

Nof, a bowshot from the college, 

Half the world from sense and knowledge ; 

and its constitution was so defective, and its corruption 
so great, that satire could scarcely exaggerate its faults. 
To fire this body with a patriotic enthusiasm, to place 
it at the head of the national movement, and to make 
it in a measure the reflex of the national will, was re- 
served for the subject of the present sketch. 

Henry Flood was the son of the Chief Justice of the 
King's Bench in Ireland. He entered Trinity College 
as a Fellow-Commoner, but terminated his career, as 
is still sometimes done, at Oxford. While at the Uni- 
versity he applied himself with much energy to the 
classics, and especially to those studies which are ad- 
vantageous to an orator in forming a pure and elevated 
style. For this purpose he learnt considerable portions 
of Cicero by heart. He wrote out Demosthenes and 
^schines on the Crown, two books of the ' Paradise 
Lost,' a translation of two books of Homer, and 



64 HENRY FLOOD. 

the finest passages from every play of Shakespeare. 
Like most persons who combine great ambition with 
great powers of expression, he devoted himself much 
to poetry ; his principal production being an ' Ode to 
P^'ame,' which was much admired at the time, and is 
written in the formal, florid style that was then popular. 
He was also passionately addicted to private theatricals, 
which were very fashionable, and which contributed 
not a little to form his style of elocution. 

The portraits drawn by his contemporaries are ex- 
ceedingly attractive. They represent him as genial, 
frank, and open ; endowed with the most brilliant con- 
versational powers, and the happiest manner, ' the most 
easy and best-tempered man in the world, as well as 
the most sensible.' ^ His figure was exceedingly grace- 
ful, and his countenance, though afterwards soured and 
distorted by disease, was originally of corresponding 
beauty. He was of a remarkably social disposition, 
delighting in witty society and in field-sports, and 
readily conciliating the affection of all classes. Lord 
Mountmorres, who knew him chiefly in his later years, 
and was inclined to judge him with severity, describes 
him as a preeminently truthful man, and exceedingly 
averse to flattery. By his marriage he had obtained a 
large fortune, and was therefore enabled to devote 
himself exclusively to the service of the country. 
When we add to this, that he was a man of great 
eloquence, indomitable courage, and singularly acute 
judgment, it will be seen that he possessed almost 
every requisite for a great public leader. 

He entered Parliament in 1759 as member for 
Kilkenny, being then in his 27th year, and took his 
seat on the benches of the Opposition. 

I have said that the Irish Parliament was at this 

Grattan. 



COrniUPTION OF THE PARLIAMENT. 65 

time subservient and corrupt, and a few facts will sliow 
clearly the extent of the evil. The Eoman Catholics, 
who were the vast majority of the population, were 
excluded from all representation, both direct and in- 
direct. They could not sit in Parliament, and they 
could not vote for Protestant members. The borough 
system, whicli had been chiefly the work of the Stuarts 
— no less than forty boroughs having been created by 
James I. alone — had been developed to such an extent 
that out of the 300 members who composed the Par- 
liament, 216 were returned for boroughs or manors. 
Of these borough members, 200 were elected by 100 
individuals, and nearly 50 by 10. According to a 
secret report drawn up by the Irish Government for 
Pitt in 1784, Lord Shannon at that time returned no 
less than 16 members, the Ponsonby family 14, Lord 
Hillsborough 9, and the Duke of Leinster 7. An 
enormous pension list, and the entire patronage of the 
Government, were systematically and steadily employed 
in corruption, and this was carried to such an extent 
that in 1784, besides 44 placemen, the House of 
Commons contained 86 members who represented con- 
stituencies which were let out to the Government in 
consideration of titles, offices, or pensions. Peerages 
were the especial reward of borough-owners who re- 
turned subservient members, and in this way both 
Houses were simultaneously corrupted : 53 peers are 
said to have nominated 123 members of the Lower 
House.' Among the Irish nobility, absenteeism was 
so common that Swift assures us that in his time the 
bishops usually constituted nearly half of the working 
members of the House of Lords ; ^ and the ecclesiastical, 

' See Grattan's Life; Ma'sey's 'History of England;' Lord Clon- 
curry's ' Recollections.' 

* Swift's Works (Scott's ed.), vol. viii. p. 365. 



66 HENRY FLOOD. 

like all other appointments, were made chiefly through 
political motives. At the same time, the House of 
Commons was almost entirely free from popular control, 
for, unless dissolved by the will of the Sovereign, it 
lasted for the whole reign. The Parliament of 
Greorge II. in this manner continued for no less than 
thirty-three years. 

Any degree of independence that was sliown by a 
body of this kind must have been due chiefly to a 
conflict between the selfish interests to which it was 
subject. Collisions between the landlords and the 
ecclesiastical authorities on the subject of tithes, and 
between the great Irish nobles and the Grovernment 
on the subject of patronage, began the independent 
spirit which the Irish Parliament ultimately showed, 
and it also, like all legislative bodies, had a natural 
tendency to extend the sphere of its authority. By a 
law called Poyning's Law, passed under Henry VII., 
it had been provided that the Irish Parliament should 
not be summoned till the Acts it was called upon to 
pass had been approved under the Great Seal of 
England, that Parliament could neither originate 
nor amend any Acts, and that its sole power was that 
of rejecting the measures thus submitted to it. Gra- 
dually, however, these restrictions were relaxed. Par- 
liament regained in a great measure the right of 
originating Bills, and it claimed, though for a long 
time unsuccessfully, the right of complete control over 
the national purse. Its constitutional position before 
1782 was a matter of constant dispute between its 
members and the English authorities, but the prevail- 
ing practice is thus described by Lord Mountmorres : 
Before a Parliament is summoned, he tells us, 'it is 
necessary that the Lord-Lieutenant and Council should 
send over an important Bill as the reason for summoning 



CONSTITUTION OF THE PARLIAMENT. 67 

that assembly. This always created violent disputes, 
and it was constantly rejected, as a money Bill which 
originated in the Council was contrary to a known 
maxim, that the Commons hold the purse of the nation. 
. . . Preparations for laws, or heads of Bills, as they 
are called, originated indifferently in either House. 
After two readings and a committal, they were sent by 
the Council to England, and were submitted usually by 
the English Privy Council to the Attorney and Solicitor 
General, and from them they were returned to the 
Council of Ireland, from which they were sent to the 
Commons if they originated there (if not, to the Lords), 
where they went through three stages, and ;he Lord- 
Lieutenant gave the royal assent in the same form 
which is observed in Great Britain. In all these stages 
in England and Ireland, it is to be remembered that 
any Bill was liable to be rejected, amended, or altered; 
but that when they had passed the Great Seal of 
England, no alteration could be made by the Irish 
Parliament.' ' The ultimate form therefore which 
every Irish measure assumed was determined by the 
authorities in England, who had the power either of 
altering or rejecting the Bills of the Irish Parliament, 
and this latter body, though it might reject the Bill 
which was returned to it from England in an amended 
form, had no power to alter it. 

The speaking in the Parliament, as might be ex- 
pected, was in general very bad. Parliamentary elo- 
quence usually implies a certain amount of patriotic 
enthusiasm, and can scarcely exist when the over- 
whelming majority are governed by corrupt motives. 
An eminent lawyer named Malone,^ who obtained the 
position of Chancellor of the Exchequer, is said to 

• Lord Mountmorres's ' History of the Irish Parliament,' vol. i. p, 59. 

* Father of the well-known editor of Shakespeare. 



68 HENRY FLOOD. 

liave been a great master of judicial eloquence ; and 
Grattan, who, in his pamphlet in answer to Lord Clare, 
has devoted a fine paragraph to him, relates that Lord 
Greorge Sackville was accustomed to mention him with 
Chatham and Mansfield as one of the three greatest 
men he had ever known, but with this exception it 
appears that before Flood, Ireland had produced no 
orator of eminence. 

Such was the condition of the Parliament when 
Flood entered upon his career, and made his maiden 
speech against Primate Stone, who had succeeded to 
much of the political influence which Boulter had pre- 
viously possessed, and was the recognised head of the 
English party. The eloquence and position of the 
young member soon made him the leader of the party 
which desired to abridge the corrupt influence of 
Grovernment, and to establish the independence of 
Parliament. 

His eloquence, as far as we can judge from the 
description of contemporaries and from the fragments 
that remain, was not quite equal to that of some later 
Irish orators. He was too sententious and too laboured. 
He had, at least in his later years, but little fire and 
imagination ; his taste was by no means pure ; and his 
language, though full of force and meaning, was often 
tinged with pedantry. He appears, however, to have 
been one of the very greatest of Parliamentary 
reasoners. To those who are acquainted with the 
speeches of Grattan, and know the wonderful force 
with which that orator condensed an argument into an 
epigram, and disencumbered it of all superfluous 
matter, it will be sufficient to say that Flood was in- 
variably considered the more convincing reasoner of 
the two. He was a great master of grave sarcasm, of 
invective, of weighty, judicial statement, and of reply; 



LUCAS. 69 

and he brought to every question a wide range of con- 
stitutional knowledge, and a keen and prescient, though 
somewhat sceptical, judgment. He is also said to have 
surpassed all his contemporaries in the irritating and 
embarrassing tactics of an Opposition leader. There 
was an air of solemn dignity in his manner which 
added much to the effect of his greater speeches, but 
did not suit trivial subjects. Grattan said of him, 
that ' on a small subject he was miserable. Put a 
distaff into his hand, and, like Hercules, he made sad 
work of it ; but give him a thunderbolt, and he had 
the arm of a Jove.' The only speaker who was at all 
able to cope with him in the earlier part of his career 
was Hely Hutchinson, the Provost of Trinity College,' 
who was superior to him in light sarcasm and raillery, 
but inferior in all beside. 

His indefatigable exertions soon produced their 
fruit. Public opinion began to show itself outside the 
walls of Parliament, and a powerful Opposition was 
organised within. The chief objects he proposed to 
himself were the shortening of the diu:ation of Parlia- 
ment, the reduction of the pension list, the creation of 
a constitutional militia, and the establishment of the 
principles of Molyneux. In pursuing the first of these 
objects, he found a powerful auxiliary in Charles Lucas, 
a very remarkable man who then occupied a prominent 
position in Irish politics. Lucas had been originally a 
Dublin apothecary. He was a man of little education 
and no property, but of a strong, shrewd, coarse in- 
tellect, great courage, and indefatigable perseverance. 
In 1741 he had detected and exposed some encroach- 
ments that had been made upon the charters of Irish 

' Author of a most admirable work on the ' Commercial Disabilities 
of Ireland,' from which I have derived much assistance in that portion 
of my subject. 



70 HENRY FLOOD. 

corporate towns, and from that time he devoted himself 
continually to politics. He asserted the independence 
of Ireland so unequivocally, and he denounced the cor- 
ruption of Parliament in so pointed and personal a 
manner, that the grand jury of Dublin at last ordered 
his addresses to be burnt, and the Parliament, in 1749, 
proclaimed him an enemy to the country, and issued a 
warrant for his apprehension- He fled to England, 
where he became a physician and practised with some 
success, and he wrote in exile an appeal to the people 
of both countries, as well as a treatise on Bath waters. 
A noli prosequi at last enabled him to return, and his 
popularity was so great that he was elected member 
for Dublin. He had lost the use of his limbs, and his 
speeches — which were chiefly remarkable for their 
violent vituperation — were all delivered sitting. He 
denounced the pensioners and the Grovernment with 
unsparing bitterness, but there was no one against 
whom his sarcasm was more envenomed than against 
his own colleague. That colleague was the Eecorder 
of Dublin, the father of Henry Grattan. Lucas brought 
forward a Septennial Bill, but it never became law. 
He assisted Flood in Parliament by his speeches, but 
exercised a far greater influence outside Parliament by 
articles in the ' Freeman's Journal,' which he had ori- 
ginated, and which was the foundation of the Irish 
Liberal press. He died in 1771.' 

For about ten years the patriotic party in the Irish 
Parliament carried on a desultory warfare on the ques- 
tions I have enumerated. Their inflvience was shown in 
the creation of a strong and growing public feeling 
outside Parliament, and of a small but able Opposition 
within its walls ; but though they often embarrassed 

• His pamphlets and addresses hare been collected : they form one 
thick and tedious volume. 



LORD TOWNSIIEND's ADMINISTRATION. 71 

a Minister and sometimes carried a division, their 
measures were always ultimately rejected either by 
Parliament or the Privy Council. In 1767, however, a 
great and unforeseen change took place in their pros- 
pects, in consequence of the appointment of Lox'd 
Townshend as Lord-Lieutenant, and of the new line of 
policy which he resolved to pursue. 

Lord Townshend was brother of the more famous 
Charles Townshend, whose brilliant but disastrous 
career closed almost immediately after this appoint- 
ment. A soldier of some distinction, with considerable 
talents and popular and convivial manners, he entered 
upon his administration under very promising circum- 
stances. His first speech favoured the project of 
making the judges irremovable ; and a Bill to that 
effect was accordingly carried through Parliament, but 
it was returned from England so altered that it was 
rejected ; and this important reform, which had been 
obtained in England at the Eevolution, was not ex- 
tended to Ireland till 1782. But the unpopularity 
which resulted from this failure was more than com- 
pensated in the following year by the enthusiasm pro- 
duced by the concession of one of the strongest wishes 
of the Irish people. The limitation of the duration of 
Parliament was justly regarded as the first condition 
of all constitutional progress, and it was a question 
upon which a violent agitation had been aroused. The 
members of Parliament, as was very natural, disliked 
the change, but they did not venture to resist the 
popular outcry ; they felt secure that if they passed 
the Bill it would be afterwards rejected in England ; 
and they were not averse to obtaining in this 
manner some popularity with their constituents. 
This little comedy was played three times, but. in 1768 
the English Cabinet resolved to yield. The violent 



72 HENRY FLOOD. 

commotion that had arisen in Ireland, the unpopularity 
produced by the defeat of the Judges Bill, anger at the 
proceedings of the Irish aristocracy, and perhaps a 
desire of strengthening the hands of Lord Townshend 
for the policy lie was about to pursue, were their pro- 
bable motives. The Bill as it passed through Parlia- 
ment was a septennial one, but was changed in England 
into an octennial one, and in that form became law. 
The policy of Flood and Lucas had so far triumphed, 
and the Parliament became in some real sense an 
organ of the popular will. 

The Lord-Lieutenant, however, who was the object of 
an enthusiastic ovation in 1768, was destined to be- 
come one of the most unpopular who have ever ruled in 
Ireland, and to give an unprecedented impulse to the 
national spirit. It had been the custom of his prede- 
cessors to reside very little in Ireland, and the manage- 
ment of Parliament was chiefly in the hands of four or 
five great borough-owners, who undertook to carry on 
the business of the Grovernment in consideration of 
obtaining a monopoly of its patronage. This system 
Lord Townshend resolved to destroy. If his object had 
been simply to diminish overgrown aristocratic power, 
to check corruption, or to make Parliament in some 
degree popular, it would have been laudable, but the 
real end of his policy appears to have been of a dif- 
ferent nature. The great Irish families were grasping, 
rapacious, and corrupt ; but they also constituted in 
some measure an independent Irish party, and Lord 
Townshend wished in consequence to break their 
power, and to make Parliament directly and exclu- 
sively subservient to Grovernment influence. With 
this object, the whole patronage of the Grovernment 
was employed, and corruption carried to an extent to 
which even the Irish Parliament was unaccustomed. 



LORD TOWNSHEND's ADMINISTRATION. 73 

The constitutional dependency of the Parliament was 
strenuously asserted, while the great aristocratic 
families were thrown into alliance with the party of 
Flood and of the patriots. 

The struggle began upon the question of a money 
Bill. A large proportion of the Irish members had 
always, as I have said, aimed at obtaining for their 
House a complete control of the national purse, and 
the practice of originating or altering money Bills in 
England had always been resented. It was contended 
by some, on very doubtful grounds, that this practice 
was illegal ; by others that, even if strictly legal, it 
was incompatible with all real national independence, 
and that Parliament should resist it by the exercise of 
its undoubted right of rejecting any money Bill which 
did not originate with itself. A money Bill originated 
by the Privy Council in 1769 was rejected by the first 
octennial Parliament on the ground that it did ' not 
take its rise in that House,' while at the same time 
the House, to prove its loyalty, voted large supplies to 
the Crown. The Lord-Lieutenant delivered, in the form 
of a speech, an angry protest, which he caused to be 
inserted in the Journals of the House of Lords ; and 
he prorogued the Parliament, though pressing business 
was on hand. For fourteen months it was not again 
summoned. In the meantime places were lavishly 
multiplied. It was afterwards a confession or a boast 
of Lord Clare that not less than half a million of 
money was spent in obtaining a majority. With such 
a constitution as that of the Irish Parliament, such 
efforts were always in some degree successful. When 
the House met in 1771, the customary congratulatory 
addresses to the Lord-Lieutenant were duly carried, 
though not without great difficulty and after a powerful 
opposition from Flood in the Commons and from 
5 



74 HENRY FLOOD. 

Charlemont in the Lords ; but when another altered 
money Bill was introduced, it was rejected on the 
motion of Flood without a division. Tlie Commis- 
sioners of Revenue, who were not allowed to sit in the 
English House of Commons, had seats in that of Ire- 
land, and Lord Townshend, with a view to increasing 
his Parliamentary influence, resolved to increase their 
number from seven to twelve. Flood denounced the 
proposed measure, and on his motion the Parliament 
passed a resolution asserting the sufficiency of seven. 
In accordance with another resolution, the opinion of 
the House was formally laid before the Lord-Lieu- 
tenant, who carried out his intention in defiance of 
Parliament. Every nerve was strained on both sides. 
A direct vote of censure against those who had advised 
this increase was then brought forward, and was car- 
ried by the casting vote of the Speaker. Lord Towns- 
hend succumbed to the storm. He was speedily 
recalled, but before he left Ireland, he succeeded in 
obtaining a vote of thanks from Parliament.^ 

During the course of tliis contest a series of political 
papers appeared in Dublin, under the title of ' Barata- 
riana,' which produced an extraordinary sensation, and 
are not even now quite forgotten. They consisted of a 
history of Barataria, being a sketch of Lord Towns- 
hend's administration, with fictitious names ; of a series 

' A curious and favourable light is thrown upon the administration 
of Lord Townshend by some letters of Lord Camden, jDublishod in 
Campbell's ' Lives of the Chancellors,' vol. vi. pp. 386-389. It appears 
that the Chancellor and the chiefs of the three law courts in Ireland had 
been always English ; that the Irish acquired the King's Eench, and 
that in the Viceroyalty pre'Ceding that of Lord Townshend an Irish 
Chief Baron was for the first time made. Flood had made a vehement 
attack upon the plan of sending over judges from England, and Lord 
Townshend was extremely anxious to make an Irishman Lord Chan- 
cellor, but the English Cabinet (guided, as it would appear, chiefly by 
the advice of Lord Camden and Lord Northington) refused to consent. 



CHANGE OF MINISTRY. 75 

of letters modelled after Junius ; and of three or four 
satirical poems. The history and the poems were by 
Sir Hercules Langrishe, the dedication and the letters 
signed ' Posthumus ' and ' Pertinax ' by Grattan, and 
those signed ' Syndercombe ' by Flood. Flood's letters 
are powerful and well-reasoned, but, like his sjDeeches, 
too laboured in style, and they certainly give no coun- 
tenance to the notion started at one time that he was 
the author of the Letters of Junius. 

Flood had now attained to a position that had as yet 
been unparalleled in Ireland. He had sliown that pure 
patriotism and great abilities could find scope in the 
Irish Parliament. He bad proved himself beyond all 
comparison the greatest orator that his country had as 
yet produced, and also a consummate master of Parlia- 
mentary tactics. In the midst of a corruption, venality, 
and subserviency which could scarcely be exaggerated, 
he had created a party before which Ministers had 
begun to quail — a party which had wrung from Eng- 
land a concession of inestimable value, which had in- 
oculated the people with the spirit of liberty and of 
self-reliance, and which promised to expand with the 
development of public opinion till it had broken every 
fetter and had recovered every right. No rival had as 
yet risen to detract from his fame, and no suspicion 
rested upon his conduct. The tide now began to turn. 
We have henceforth to describe the rapid decadence 
of his power. "VVe have to follow him descending from 
his proud position, eclipsed by a more sj)lendid genius, 
soured by disappointment, and clouded by suspicion, 
and sinking, after one brilliant flash of departing glory, 
into a position of comparative insignificance. 

The Administration of Lord Harcourt succeeded 
that of Lord Townshend. It was conducted on more 
liberal principles, and Flood at first supported it as an 



76 HENRY FLOOD. 

independent member, and at length consented to ac- 
cept the office of Vice-Treasurer. Of all the steps of 
his career tliis has been the most censured, and it is 
only with great diffidence that I venture to discuss 
his motives. The materials in print for forming an 
opinion on this portion of Irish history are so extremely 
scanty, and they consist in so large a degree of parti- 
san speeches, letters, and biographies, that an historian 
must always feel painfully conscious that the true 
springs and motives of the proceedings he describes 
may lie beyond his knowledge, and that an accurate 
account of the secret negotiations of the Viceregal 
Government with the leading statesmen might give a 
wholly different complexion to his narrative. The 
reasons, however, which Flood alleged for joining the 
Grovernment are on record, and, besides contemporary 
letters and conversations that were preserved, we possess 
his own very elaborate vindication in a speech which he 
delivered in 1783 in reply to the invective of Grattan. 
These reasons seem to me amply sufficient to exculpate 
him from the cliarge of corruption. Flood had never 
been a factious or systematic opponent of Govern- 
ments, and his persistent hostility to that of Lord 
Townshend only dated from the prorogation. He 
desired, it is true, to make the Irish Legislature as 
independent as that of England, and it was an intel- 
ligible policy to stand apart from every Government 
which refused to make the concession ; but such a policy 
then appeared absolutely suicidal. The constitution 
of Parliament and the character of its members made 
it seem utterly impossible that a measure of indepen- 
dence could be carried in the teeth of tlie Government, 
and if it were carried there was not the faintest pro- 
bability of such a movement outside the walls as would 
compel the English Parliament to vield to it. It was 



REASONS FOR TAKING OFFICE. 77 

not possible for Flood or for any man to predict the 
wonderful impulse that was given to the national cause 
by the American war and by the arms of the volunteers. 
His success during Lord Townshend's Administration 
was chiefly due to the accidental alliance of some 
of the most selfish members of the aristocracy with his 
party, and even then two votes of thanks to the Lord- 
Lieutenant were carried in spite of his opposition. 
When the irritation which Lord Townshend had caused 
had been allayed by the appointment of a new Viceroy, 
the party of Flood began at once to dwindle, and it 
appeared evident that under the existing constitution 
of Parliament that party could not reasonably hope to 
do more than modify the course of events. Under 
these circumstances Flood contended that the true 
policy of patriots was to act with the Grovernment, and 
endeavour to make its measures diverge in the direction 
of public utility. A patriot in office would be obliged 
to waive the discussion of some measures which he 
desired, but he could do more for the popular cause 
than if he were leading a hopeless minority. Flood 
himself was so indisputably the first man in Parliament 
that he reasonably held that he could greatly influence 
the Grovernment, and Lord Harcourt was an honourable 
and liberal man, and he came to supersede the Viceroy 
whom Flood had most bitterly opposed. At such a 
time, and estimating the strength of parties when 
Ireland was in its normal condition, Flood concluded 
that the discussion of the independence of Parliament 
might be advantageously postponed, if its postpone- 
ment were purchased by some minor concessions on 
the part of the Government. By becoming Vice- 
Treasurer he opened to Irishmen an office from which 
they had been hitherto excluded, he silenced the cry 
of faction which had been raised against him, and he 



78 HENRY FLOOD. 

proved the compatibility of national principles with 
perfect attachment to the Crown. Ministers had shown 
themselves willing to make considerable concessions in 
the direction of economy in order to obtain his support. 
Some prospect had been held out of a relaxation of the 
commercial restrictions. They had distinctly autho- 
rised him to propose an absentee -tax, to which he, like 
many Irish Liberals, attached a great importance ; and 
he was not without hopes of being able still further to 
modify their policy. These reasons, enforced by the 
persuasive powers of Sir John Blacquiere, determined 
him, as he said, to accept office, and there appears to 
me to be no valid reason for questioning his account. 
It may be added that the faults of his character never 
were those of corruption. A certain avarice of fame, 
a nervous solicitude about opinion, made him often 
jealous of competitors, fretful and uncertain as a col- 
league, anxious to identify himself with all great 
measures, and prone to exaggerate his share in their 
success ; but in no other part of his life was he open to 
a suspicion of being governed by love of money ; nor 
Avas he in this respect much tempted, for he possessed 
a large private fortune, and had no children. 

Lord Cliarlemont protested strongly against this 
resolution of Flood, and there can be no doubt that it 
formed the fatal turning-point of his life. For nearly 
seven years he remained in office, and during that 
period he was obliged to keep resolute silence on those 
great constitutional questions which in former years he 
had ceaselessly expounded. His character was no longer 
above suspicion, and the confidence of the people — the 
chief element of his power — had passed away. The 
popular mind always detects readily a change of opi*- 
nions or of policy, but seldom cares to analyse the 
motives that may have produced it. The absentee-tax 



DEFENCELESS STATE OF IRELAND. 79 

was strongly opposed by the great Whig noblemen in 
England, and the Government at length abandoned it. 
The commercial relaxations that he expected were 
pertinaciously withheld. A two years' embargo was 
imposed upon Ireland, in consequence of the American 
war ; and in this unpopular measure he was compelled 
to acquiesce. Like very many politicians of his time, 
he seems to have regarded the subjugation of America 
as of vital importance to the empire. 'Destruction,' 
he once predicted in a characteristic sentence, ' Avill 
come upon the British empire like the coldness of 
death. It will creep upon it from the extreme parts.' 
Four thousand Irish troops were sent to fight against 
tlie Americans. The inducement was, that the pay 
would be saved to Ireland ; the objections were, that 
it left Ireland without the stipulated number of troops, 
and in a measure defenceless, and that this extra- 
ordinary exertion seemed to imply an extraordinary 
amount of zeal against a cause which most Liberals 
regarded as that of justice and of freedom. Flood 
defended the measure, and designated the trooj)S as 
'armed neffotiators.' It was to this unfortunate ex- 
pression that Grattan alluded when he described him, 
in his famous invective, as standing ' with a metaphor 
in his mouth and a bribe in his pocket, a champion 
against the rights of America — the only hope of Ire- 
land, and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind.' 

But results such as no one had predicted soon sprang 
from this measm-e. The Mayor of Belfast called upon 
the Government to place a garrison in that town to 
protect it against the French, and was informed that 
half a troop of dismounted cavalry and half a troop of 
invalids were all that could be spared to defend the 
commercial capital of Ireland. 

Then arose one of those movements of enthusiasm 



80 IIEXET FLOOD. 

that occur two or three times in the history of a nation. 
The cry to arms passed through the land, and was 
speedily responded to by all parties and by all creeds. 
Beginning among the Protestants of the north, the 
movement soon spread, though in a less degree, to 
other parts of the island, and the war of religions and of 
castes, that had so long divided the people, vanished 
as a dream. The inertness produced by centuries of 
oppression was speedily forgotten, and replaced by the 
consciousness of recovered strength. From Howth to 
Connemara, from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear, 
the spirit of enthusiasm had passed, and the creation of 
an army had begun. The military authorities who could 
not defend the country could not refuse to arm those who 
liad arisen to supply their place. Though the popula- 
tion of Ireland was little more than half of what it is at 
present, 60,000 men soon assembled, disciplined and 
appointed as a regular army, fired by the strongest 
enthusiasm, and moving as a single man. They rose 
to defend their country alike from the invasion of a 
foreign army and from the encroachments of an alien 
Legislature. Faithful to the connection between the 
two islands, they determined that that connection 
should rest upon mutual respect and upon essential 
equality. In the Avords of one of their own resolutions, 
' they knew their duty to their Sovereign, and they 
were loyal ; they knew their duty to themselves, and 
they were resolved to be free.' They were guided by 
the chastened wisdom, the unquestioned patriotism, 
the ready tact of Charlemont. Conspicuous among 
their colonels was Flood, not uninjured in his repu- 
tation by his ministerial career, yet still reverent from 
the memory of his past achievements and the splendour 
of his yet unfading intellect ; and there, too, was he 
before whose genius all other Irishmen had begun to 



THE VOLUNTEERS. 81 

pale — the patriot of unsullied purity — the statesman 
who could fire a nation by his enthusiasm and restrain 
it by his wisdom — the orator whose burning sentences 
became the very proverbs of freedom — the gifted, the 
high-minded Henry Grattan. 

It was a moment of supreme danger for the empire. 
The energies of England were taxed to the utmost by 
the war, and there could be no reasonable doubt that 
the Volunteers, supported by the people, could have 
wrested Ireland from her grasp. A nation unhabituated 
to freedom, and maddened by centuries of oppression, 
had suddenly acquired this overwhelming power. Could 
its leaders restrain it within the limits of moderation ? 
Or, if it was in their power, was it in their will ? 

The voice of the Volunteers soon spoke, in no 
equivocal terms, on Irish politics. They resolved that 
' Citizens, by learning the use of arms, forfeit none of 
their civil rights ; ' and they formed themselves into a 
regular Convention, with delegates and organisation, 
for the purpose of discussing the condition of the 
country. Their denunciations of the commercial and 
legislative restrictions grew louder and louder ; and 
two cannons were shown labelled with the inscription 
' Free Trade or this ! ' 

In Parliament Grrattan and Hussey Burgh made 
themselves the interpreters of the prevailing feeling. 
The latter, in a speech which was long remembered as 
a masterpiece of eloquence, described the condition of 
the country, and called upon the Ministers to avert 
war by timely and ample concessions. ' Talk not to 
me,' he exclaimed, ' of peace ; it is not peace, but 
smothered war. England has sown her laws in dragons' 
teeth, and they have sprung up in armed men.' The 
restrictions on trade were made the special objects of 
attack. I have described in the last chapter the 



82 HENEY FLCOD. 

manner in which — with the exception of the linen 
trade — almost every branch of Irish commerce and 
manufacture was crippled or ruined by law, and very 
few measures of relief had been carried during the 
first three quarters of the eighteenth century. Some 
additional encouragement had indeed been given to 
Irish linen. Several temporary Acts were passod per- 
mitting Irish cattle, salted provisions, and tallow to 
enter England, and in 1765 Ireland was allowed to 
receive iron and timber direct from the colonies, but 
the more important disabilities remained unchanged. 
In 1775, however, a strong movement for free trade 
arose in Ireland, which fully triumphed under the in- 
fluence of the Volunteej-s in 1779. In the first of 
these years Irish vessels were admitted to the fisheries 
of Newfoundland and Greenland. In 1778 several 
small relaxations were made in the prohibitory laws 
which excluded Ireland from the colonial trade. In 
the beginning of 1779 an attempt was made to allay 
the Irish cry for the repeal of all commercial dis- 
abilities by granting new bounties to linen and to 
hemp, and by permitting the cultivation of tobacco in 
Ireland. The time, however, for such compromise had 
passed, and on both sides of the Channel public feeling 
ran dangerously high. The English manufacturers, 
and especially the towns of Manchester and Glasgow, 
were bitterly opposed to any measure of free trade, and 
their opposition hampered the very liberal tendencies 
of Lord North. The Irish were in arms, and they 
demanded nothing less than to be placed on the same 
footing with the English. Numerous meetings were 
held, and resolutions adopted, pledging the people 
neither to import or consume any articles of English 
manufacture till the commercial restrictions were re- 
moved ; and when Parliament met in October 1779, 



REMOVED FROM THE MINISTRY. 83 

Burgh moved, as an amendment to the address from 
the throne, a petition for ' an extension of trade.' 
Flood, who was still a Minister, rose and suggested 
that the expression ' free trade ' should be employed, 
and spoke in favour of the amendment, which was 
carried. The House went in a body to present their 
petition to the Lord-Lieutenant, and the Volunteers 
lined the road and presented arms to them as they 
passed. The due emphasis was thus supplied to their 
request, and Lord North soon after brought forward in 
England a series of measures which removed the chief 
grievances that were complained of. The Acts pro- 
hibiting the Irish from exporting their woollen and 
glass manufactures were repealed, and the colonial 
trade was thrown ojDen to Leland. 

The events that have been described rendered the 
position of Flood as Minister still more irksome than 
it had been, and at last he took the step which it was 
plainly his duty to have taken before — threw up his 
office and rejoined his old friends. The Ministers 
marked their displeasure at his conduct by dismissing 
him from the Council ; and he never regained his 
former position among the Liberals in Parliament. 
He found that his long services had been forgotten 
during bis long silence, that the genius of Grattan had 
obtained a complete ascendency in Parliament, and 
that the questions he had for so many years discussed 
were taken out of his hands. He felt the change 
very acutely, and it exercised a perceptible influence 
upon his temper. In 1779 Yelverton brought forward 
a Bill for the repeal of Poyning's Law ; and Flood, 
while supporting the measure, complained bitterly that 
' after a service of twenty years in the study of this 
particular question ' he had been superseded. He added : 
'The honourable gentleman is erecting a temple of 



84 HENEY FLOOD. 

liberty. I hope that at least I shall be allowed a 
niche in the fane.' Yelverton retorted by reminding 
them that by the civil law ' if a man should separate 
from his wife, desert, and abandon her for seven years, 
another might then take her and give her his protec- 
tion.' 

I pass over the events that immediately followed 
the discussions of the Volunteers, and the ultimate 
triumph of Irish independeace, as belonging more 
especially to the life of Grattan. The next prominent 
transaction in which Flood appears was the fatal con- 
troversy on the subject of Simple Repeal. How far in 
this matter he was actuated by personal motives, and 
how far by pure patriotism, it is impossible to deter- 
mine. This much may be said in his favour — that he 
supported every step of his policy by specious if not 
by conclusive arguments, and that he carried with him 
a very large section of the intellect of the country. 
The broad question on which he differed from Grattan 
was the advisability of continuing the Volunteer Con- 
vention. Grattan wished Ireland to subside into its 
normal condition as soon as the independence of the 
Parliament had been declared ; he felt the danger and 
the irregularity of having the representatives of an 
armed force organised like an independent Parliament, 
and overawing all other authority in the land. He 
considered that Parliamentary reforms should emanate 
from Parliament alone, and should be the result of no 
coercion, except that of public opinion. Flood, on the 
other hand, perceived that Ireland was in a position, 
with reference to England, such as she might never 
occupy again ; he believed that by continuing the 
Convention a little longer, guarantees of Irish in- 
dependence might be obtained which it would be 
impossible afterwards to overthrow; and that Parlia- 



SIMPLE REPEAL. 85 

ment might be so reformed as to be made completely 
subject to public opinion, and therefore completel}' 
above the danger of ministerial intrigue. He fore- 
saw what Grattan at that time does not appear to 
have foreseen, that the English Ministers would never 
cordially accept the new position of Ireland ; that 
they would avail themselves of every extraordinary 
circumstance, of every means of corruption in their 
power, to strangle the independence of Parliament ; 
and that the borough system gave them a fatal facility 
for the accomplishment of their purpose. 

The Simple Repeal controversy may be thus shortly 
stated : English statesmen maintained, and Irish Libe- 
rals, from Molyneus to Grattan, denied, that the effect 
of Poyning's Law was to make the Irish Parliament 
entirely subservient to English control.^ The Parlia- 
ment of England fixed the sense by a declaratory Act, 
asserting the dependence of that of Ireland, and it was 
on these two enactments that its authority in Ireland 
rested. In 1782 the Irish Parliament asserted its own 
independence, and the English Parliament repealed 
its declaratory Act. The question at issue was whether 
this was sufficient, or whether an express renunciation 
should be exacted from England. 

Grattan argued that the principle of dependence 
was embodied in the declaratory Act, and therefore 
that its repeal was a resignation of the pretended right ; 
that when a man of honour affirms that he possesses a 

' Tho following is Bacon's account of its origin and nature : 
* Poj'ning, the better to make compensation of the meagreness of his 
services in the wars by acts of peace, called a Parliament, when was 
made that memorable Act which at this day is called Poyning's Law, 
whereby all the statutes of England were made to bo of force in Ireland, 
for before they were not ; neither are any now in force in Ireland which 
were made since that time, which was tho eighteenth year of the King.' 
— History of Henry VII. 



86 HENRY FLOOD. 

certain power, and afterwards solemnly retracts his 
declaration, it is equivalent to a distinct disavowal, 
and that the same laws of honour apply to nations and 
to individuals ; that to require an express renunciation 
from England would be to exhibit a distrustful and 
an overbearing- spirit, and would keep alive the ill- 
feeling between the two countries which it was most 
important to allay ; that it would also stultify the Irish 
Liberals, for it would imply that England actually 
possessed the right she was called upon to renounce. 

To these reasonings it was replied that the decla- 
ratory law did not make a right, and that therefore its 
repeal could not tmmake it ;. that though Irish Liberals 
maintained that England had never possessed the right 
in question, the English Parliament had asserted its 
authority, and that the repeal of the declaratory Act 
v/as not necessarily anything more than the withdrawal 
of that assertion as a matter of expediency for the 
present ; that an express renunciation would be a 
charter of Irish liberties such as no legal quibble 
could evade ; and that if England had no desire to 
re-assert her claim, she could have no objection to 
make it. It was added that the history of English 
dealings v/ith Ireland showed plainly how necessary it 
was to leave no loophole or possibility of encroachment. 
It was a peculiarity of the Irish question that the in- 
dependence of the Irisli Parliament was bitterly opposed 
in England, on different grounds, by the most opposite 
parties. The high prerogative party objected to it as 
a measure of political emancipation. Tlie trading 
classes, who constituted the chief strength of the Whig 
party, were equally opposed to it through their jealousy 
of Irish trade. 

In addition to these general considerations, several 



SIMPLB RKPEAL. 87 

circumstances had occurred in England which greatly 
disturbed the public mind. Lord Abingdon, in the 
English House of Lords, had drawn a distinction 
between a right to internal and a right to external 
legislation, and had argued that, while England had 
relinquished the former, she liad retained the latter. 
An English law with reference to the importation of 
sugar from St. Domingo had been drawn up in terms 
that seemed applicaljlo to Ireland, and Lord Mansfield 
had decided an old Irish law case. 

The Simple Kepeal question was not started by 
Flood, but it gained its importance chiefly from his 
adhesion to the party who were yet unsatisfied. He 
brought forward their arguments with his usual force, 
and concluded his speech with an appeal of great 
solemnity, which bears every mark of earnest feel- 
ing. 'Were the voice,' he said, 'with which I now 
utter this, the last effort of expiring nature ; were the 
accent which conveys it to you the breath that was to 
waft me to that grave to which we all tend, and to 
which my footsteps rapidly accelerate, I would go on, 
I would make my exit by a loud demand for your 
rights : and I call upon the Grod of truth and liberty, 
who has so often favoured you, and who has of late 
looked down upon you with such a peculiar grace and 
glory of protection, to continue to you His inspirings, 
to crown you with the spirit of His completion, and to 
assist you against the errors of those that are honest, 
as well as against the machinations of those that are 
not.' Most of the Volunteers, headed by the lawyer 
corps, whose opinion on such a question naturally car- 
ried great weight, supported Flood, and the popularity 
of Grattan in the coiuitry waned as rapidly as it had 
risen. It became customary to say that nothing had 



88 HENEY FLOOD. 

really been gained until the formal renunciation had 
been made ; and at last Fox brouglit forward in Eng- 
land the required renunciatory Act. 

11, -was in the course of this controversy that the 
famous collision between Flood and Grattan took 
place. It had been for some time evident to close ob- 
servers that it must come sooner or later. For several 
years the friendship between these two great men had 
been growing colder and colder, and giving Avay to 
feelings of hostility. Flood felt keenly the manner in 
which he had been superseded as leader of the Liberals. 
He could not reconcile himself to occupying a second 
place to a man so much younger than himself, after 
having been for so long a period the most conspicuous 
character in the country. The particular subject of 
the independence of Parliament he had brought for- 
ward again and again when Grrattan was a mere boy, 
and it seemed hard that another should reap the glory 
of his long and thankless labour. He had sat in Par- 
liament for sixteen years before Grattan had entered 
it. He had borne the brunt of the battle at a time 
when the prospects of the cause seemed hopeless ; and 
if less brilliant than his rival he was deemed by most 
men fully his equal in solid capacity, and greatly his 
superior in experience. Grattan, on the other hand, 
regarded Flood's adhesion to the Harcourt Administra- 
tion as an act of apostacy, and his agitation of Simple 
Eepeal as a struggle for a personal triumph at the ex- 
pense of the interests of the country. He dreaded the 
permanence of the Volunteer Convention, the increase 
of the ill-feeling existing between the two countries, 
and a needless and dangerous agitation of the public 
mind. Ill health and the position he had so long 
held had given Flood a somewhat authoritative and 
petulant tone, whjch contrasted remarkably with hia 



COLLISION WITH GRATTAN. 89 

iirbcanity in private life ; and Grattan, on his side, was 
embittered by tlie sudden decay of his popularity, and 
by several slight and not very successful conflicts with 
his rival. 

Under these circumstances it needed but little to 
produce an explosion, and that little was supplied by 
a singularly discourteous and unfair allusion to Flood's 
illness which escaped from Grrattan in the heat of the 
debate. Flood rose indignantly, and, after a few words 
of preface, launched into a fierce diatribe against his 
opponent. His task was a difficult one, for few men 
presented a more unassailable character. Invective, 
however, of the most outrageous description, was the 
custom of the time, and invective between good and 
great men is necessarily unjust. He dwelt with bitter 
emphasis on the grant the Parliament had made to 
Grattan. He described him as ' that mendicant patriot 
who was bought by his country, and sold that country 
for prompt payment ;' and he dilated with the keenest 
sarcasm upon the decline of his popularity. He con- 
cluded, in a somewhat exultant tone : ' Permit me to 
say that if the honourable gentleman often provokes 
such contests as this, he will have but little to boast of 
at the end of the session.' Grattan, however, was not 
imprepared. He had long foreseen the collision, and 
had embodied all his angry feelings in one elaborate 
speech. Employing the common artifice of an ima- 
ginary character, he painted the whole career of his 
opponent in the blackest colours, condensed in a few 
masterly sentences all the charges that had ever been 
brought against him, and sat down, having delivered 
an invective which, for concentrated and crushing 
power, is almost or altogether unrivalled in modern 
oratory. 

Thus terminated the friendship between two men 



90 HENRY FLOOD. 

who lidd done more than any who were then living" for 
their country, who had known each other for twenty 
years, and whose lives are imperishably associated in 
history. Flood afterwards presided at a meeting of 
the Volunteers, where a resolution complimentary to 
Grattan was passed ; Grrattan, in his pamphlet on the 
Union, and more than once in private conversation, 
gave noble testimony to the greatness of Flood ; but 
they were never reconciled again, and their cordial 
co-operation, which was of such inestimable import- 
ance to the country, was henceforth almost an impos- 
sibility. 

The dissension between the Parliament and the 
Volunteers had now become very marked, and it was 
evident that there existed among the latter a party 
who desired open war with England. It is curious that 
their leader should have been by birth an Englishman, 
and by position a bishop. The Earl of Bristol and 
Bishop of Derry was son of that Lord Hervey who was 
long remembered only as the object of the fiercest of 
all the satires of Pope, but who within the last few 
years has been revealed in altogether a new light, by 
the publication of those masterly memoirs in which he 
had described the court and much of the State policy 
of Greorge II. The character of the Bishop has been 
very differently painted, but its chief ingredients are 
sufficiently evident, whatever controversy there may be 
about the proportions in which they were mixed. He 
appears to have been a man of respectable learning 
and of real talent, sincerely attached to his adopted 
country, and on questions of religious disqualifica- 
tion greatly in advance of most of his contempo- 
raries ; but he was at the same time utterly destitute 
of the distinctive virtues of a clergyman, and he 
was one of the most dangerous politicians of his time. 



THE BISnOP OF DEERY. 91 

Vain, impetuous, and delighting in display, with an 
insatiable appetite for popularity, and utterly reck- 
less about the consequences of his acts, he exhibited, 
though an English peer and an Irish bishop, all the 
characteristics of the most irresponsible adventurer. 
Under other circumstances he might have been capable 
of the policy of an Alberoni. In Ireland, for a short 
time, he rode upon the crest of the wave ; and if he 
had obtained the control he aspired to over the Volun- 
teer movement, he would probably have headed a civil 
war. But though a man of clear, prompt judgment, 
of indisputable courage, and of considerable popular 
talents, he had neither the caution of a great rebel 
nor the settled principles of a great statesman. His 
habits were extremely convivial ; he talked with reck- 
less folly to his friends, and even to British officers, of 
the appeal to arms which he meditated ; and he exhi- 
bited a passion for ostentation which led men seriously 
to question his sanity. 'He appeared always,' says 
Barrington, ' di'essed with peculiar care and neatness, 
generally entirely in purple, and he wore diamond knee 
and shoe buckles ; but what I most observed was, that 
he wore white gloves with gold fringe round the wrists, 
and large gold tassels hanging from them.' The osten- 
tation he manifested in his dress he displayed in 
every part of his public life. A troop of horse, com- 
manded by his nephew, used to accompany him when 
he went out, and to mount guard at his door. On 
one occasion he drove in royal state to a great meet- 
ing which was held at the Rotundo, escorted by a 
body of the Volunteers, who sounded their trumpets 
as they passed the Parliament-house, much to the asto- 
nishment of the assembled members. 

Fortunately, however, the influence of the Bishop 
with the Volunteers, though very great, was not 



92 HENRY FLOOD. 

absolute. He desired to become their president, but, 
though he had many partisans, Lord Charlemont was 
elected to the place ; and in the Convention itself 
the practised oratory of Flood gave him a com- 
plete ascendency. At the same time, it is not sur- 
prising that the proceedings of the Volunteers should 
have created much alarm in many minds, and that 
strong wishes should be felt for tlie dissolution of the 
Convention. But for this measure Flood was not 
prepared. He maintained that two great dangers had 
menaced the independence of Parliament, that it 
might be evaded by a legal quibble, and that it 
might be betrayed by the corruption of its members. 
By obtaining from England a distinct renunciation of 
all supremacy, he had provided effectually against the 
first of these dangers. By reforming the Parliament, 
he sought to guard against the latter. But, in order 
that a Eeform Bill should be brought forward with 
any chance of success, he believed it to be essential 
that it should be supported by all the threatening- 
weight of the Volunteer Convention. Had he suc- 
ceeded in carrying the reform he meditated, he would 
have placed the independence of Ireland on the broad 
basis of the people's will, he would have fortified and 
completed the glorious work that he had himself begun, 
and he would have averted a series of calamities which 
have not even yet spent their force. We should then 
never have known the long night of corruption that 
overcast the splendour of Irish liberty. The blood of 
1798 might never have flowed. The Legislative Union 
would never have been consummated, or, if there had 
been a Union, it would have been effected by the will 
of the people, and not by the treachery of their repre- 
sentatives, and it would have been remembered only 
with gratitude or with content. 



THE VOLUNTEER REFORM BILL. 93 

The Eeform Bill was drawn up b}' Flood, and was 
first submitted to the Volunteer Convention for their 
sanction. In one respect it was glaringly defective. 
It proposed to extend the franchise largely, but it gave 
no political power to the Catholics. On this point 
both Flood and Charlemont were strenuously opposed 
to Grattan ; and when, in 1782, a measiu-e had been 
brought forward to enable the Catholics to purchase 
estates. Flood strongly supported an amendment ex- 
cepting all borough rights by which members might 
be returned to Parliament. With this grave exception, 
the measure was a comprehensive one, and would have 
effectually cured the great evils of the Legislatvire. It 
proposed to open the close boroughs by giving votes to 
all Protestant forty-shilling freeholders, and to lease- 
holders of thirty-one years, of which fifteen were un- 
expired. It provided that in the case of decayed 
boroughs the franchise should be extended to the 
adjoining parishes ; that pensioners who held their 
pensions during pleasure should be excluded from 
Parliament ; that those who accepted a pension for life 
or a Grovernment place should vacate their seats ; that 
each member should take an oath that he had not 
been guilty of bribery at his election ; and that the 
duration of Parliament should be limited to three 
years. 

It was in truth a night of momentous importance to 
the country when Flood brought forward in Parliament 
the Volunteer Eeform Bill, and the crowded benches 
and the anxious faces that surrounded him showed how 
fully the magnitude of the struggle was appreciated. 
The elation of recovered popularity and the proud con- 
sciousness of the grandeur of his position, dispelled the 
clouds that had so long hung over his mind, and im- 
parted a glow to his eloquence worthy of his brightest 



94 HENRY FLOOD. 

days. He had too much tact even to mention the 
Volunteers in his opening- speech ; but the uniform he 
wore, the fire of his eye, and the almost regal majesty 
of his tone and of his gesture reminded all who heard 
him of the source of his inspiration. He was opposed 
by Yelverton, the Attorney- General. Yelverton was 
at all times a powerful speaker, but on this niglit he 
seems to have made his greatest effort. He called 
upon the House to reject the Bill without even ex- 
amining its intrinsic merits, as coming from the emis- 
saries of an armed body ; he denounced it as an insult 
and a menace, as a manifest infringement of the privi- 
leges of Parliament ; and he appealed to all parties to 
rally round the liberties of their country, so lately 
rescued from English domination, and now threatened 
by a military coimcil. Flood, in his reply, rested — 
perhaps rather disingenuously — on his not having 
spoken of the Volunteers. He had not mentioned 
them, but if they were attacked he was prepared to 
support them ; and then he digressed, with the adroit- 
ness of a practised debater, into their defence. He 
reminded his hearers how much they owed to that 
body ; how the Volunteers had emancipated their trade 
and struck off their chains ; how absurd, how ungrate- 
ful it would "he to assail their deliverers as enemies, 
and to brand them as hostile to liberty. Yet it was 
not for the Volunteers that he asked reform ; he would 
rather place the question on its own merits. 'We 
come to you,' he said, ' as members of this House ; in 
that capacity we present you with a Reform Bill. 
Will you receive it from us ? ' 

He was, however, but feebly supported and strongly 
opposed. Many members dreaded reform on personal 
grounds, and were doubtless glad of a plausible pretext 
for opposing it ; others believed that the Convention 



DANGER OF THE CONVENTION. 95 

was the most pressing danger. Lord Cbarlemont, the 
leader of the Volunteers, who, though not a member, 
had a great influence in the Lower House, was timid, 
vacillating, and perplexed. The G-overnment exerted 
all its influence against Flood, and a majority, actuated 
by various motives, rejected the Bill. The numbers 
were 158 to 49, and it is said that more than halt 
the majority were placemen. A resolution to the 
effect that the dignity of the House required as- 
serting, whicli was tantamount to a censure of the 
Volunteers, was then moved and carried. Grrattan 
voted with Flood on the reform qviestion, and against 
liim on the subsequent resolution. Lord Cbarlemont 
adjourned the Convention sine die, and its members 
separated with an alacrity and a submission that fur- 
nished the most eloquent refutation of the charges of 
their opponents. 

The conduct of Flood in this transaction has given 
rise to much controversy, and it is difficult to pro- 
nounce very decidedly upon it. There can be no 
question that the existence of an assembly consisting 
of the representatives of a powerful military force, 
convened for the piu-pose of discussing political ques- 
tions, was extremely menacing, both to the Parliament 
and the connection. If the Bishop of Derry had ob- 
tained the presidency, matters would probably have 
been pushed to a rebellion. This period was perhaps 
the only one in Irish history when the connection 
between the two countries might have been easily 
dissolved, and when the dissolution would not have 
involved Ireland in anarchy or civil war. In the 
prostrate condition to which England had been re- 
duced, she could scarcely have resisted an organised 
army, which rose at last to more than 100,000 soldiers, 
which was commanded by the men of most property 



96 HENRY FLOOD. 

and influence iu tlie country, and was supported by the 
enthusiasm of the nation. Such an organisation was 
far more powerful than that which had just wrested 
the colonies from her grasp. Had the severance been 
effected, Ireland possessed a greater amount of legis- 
lative talent than at any former period, and her newly 
emancipated Parliament only needed a reform to 
become a most efficient organ of national representa- 
tion. There was then no serious conflict of classes, 
and tlie Catholic question, though it caused division 
among politicians, was at this time no source of danger 
to the country. The Catholics had neither education, 
leaders, nor ambition. They were perfectly peaceful, 
and indeed quiescent, and the process of emancipation 
would probably have been carried out silently and 
tranquilly. The most obnoxious of the penal laws had 
already been repealed. The Volunteers had passed a 
resolution approving of that repeal. The rising school 
of politicians were in favour of granting political 
power to the Catholics, and the cause had no more un- 
hesitating supporter than the Bishop of Derry. 

This was the course which the Volunteer movement 
would probably have taken if the influence of the 
Bishop had prevailed. Flood, however, does not appear 
to have had any desire to produce rebellion,^ and he 
was no friend of Catholic emancipation. His object 
was to overawe the Parliament by tlie menace of 
military force, in order to induce it to reform itself. 
It is sufficiently manifest that such an attempt was 
extremely dangerous and unconstitutional, but it was 
a desperate remedy applied to a desperate disease. It 

• See, however, on tlie other side, a curious traditionary anecdote 
related by O'Connell, on the authority of Bartholomew Iloarc, a friend 
of Flood, and preserved in O'Neil Daunt's 'Ireland and her Agitators,' 
pp. 4, 5. 



rOLITICAL ATTITUDE OF THE YOLUNTEERS. 97 

was a matter of life or death to the Irish Constitution 
that the system of corruption and rotten boroughs 
which gave the Castle a sure and overwhelming majority 
should be ended, and, as a great majority of the 
members had a personal interest in its permanence, 
some degree of intimidation was absolutely necessary. 
Even the Eeform Bill of 1832 would never have been 
passed if the country had been tranquil. There was, 
no doubt, a considerable difference between the display 
of force to carry free trade and legislative indepen- 
dence in accordance with the wishes of Parliament, 
and the display of a similar force to overawe the Par- 
liament ; but if the liberties of Ireland were to be 
permanent, the reform was absolutely necessary, and at 
this time it could in no other way have been effected. 
Had Charlemont, Grattan, and Flood been cordially 
united, it would probably have been forced through 
Parliament, and the Constitution of 1782 would have 
been established. Whether, however, the Volunteers, 
flushed with a new conquest, would have consented to 
disband, may reasonably be doubted. Fox, in a very 
earnest letter, urging the Irish Government to resist 
the Volunteer demand to the uttermost, said: 'The 
question is not whether this or that measure shall take 
place, but whether the Constitution of Ireland, which 
Irish patriots are so proud of having established, shall 
exist, or whether the Government shall be as purely 
military as ever it was under the Prsetorian bands.' 
The defensive utility of the Volunteers had terminated 
with the peace ; and their desire of encroaching on the 
political sphere had grown. I venture, however, to 
think that the probabilities were, on the whole, in 
favour of the peaceful dispersion of the force when its 
work was accomplished. The French Eevolution, 
which has given so violent and democratic a tendency 
6 



98 HENRY FLOOD. 

to most popular movements, had not yet taken place. 
The Volunteers, as I have said, were guided by the 
rank and property of the country, and these were 
amply represented in the Convention. Above all, the 
moderation of the assembly in selecting Charlemont 
for its head, and in dispersing peacefully after its 
defeat, may be taken as a sufficient evidence of the 
patriotism of its members. 

All the leading men, however, were somewhat below 
the occasion. G-rattan was not a member of the Con- 
vention. He would not co-operate with Flood, and he 
utterly disapproved of the continuance of the Conven- 
tion, and of all attempts to overawe the Legislature. 
Charlemont remained at the head of the Volunteers 
chiefly in order to moderate them, and his opinion on 
the question at issue was, in reality, little different 
from that of Grrattan. The Bishop of Derry was vio- 
lent, vain, and foolish. Flood was but too open to the 
imputation of having stirred up the question of simple 
repeal through envy at the triumph of Grrattan, and of 
aggrandising the power of the Convention, in which 
he was almost supreme, through jealousy of Parliament, 
in which his influence had diminished. In under- 
taking an enterprise of so perilous and unconstitutional 
a character, it ought at least to have been made certain 
that the voice of the people was with the Volunteers ; 
but no step whatever appears to have been taken to 
obtain petitions or demonstrations, and at the very 
time when Flood was pushing the country to the verge 
of a civil war, he was damping the enthusiasm of the 
Catholics by carefully excluding them from his scheme 
of reform. 

The effects of this episode upon the country were 
very injm'ious. Violent riots broke out in Dublin, 
and the mob forced its way into the Parliament House. 



LAST YEARS OF THE BISHOP OF DERRY. 99 

The Parliament had shown some spirit in refusing- 
even to entertain a Bill emanating from a military 
force, but, as it refused with equal pertinacity to yield 
to subsequent Reform Bills which were brought forward 
without military assistance, and with the support of 
petitions from twenty-six counties, it neither received 
nor deserved credit. The Volunteer Convention dis- 
solved itself; but the Volunteers themselves, with 
diminished importance, and under the guidance of 
inferior men, continued for many years in a divided 
and broken state, and the United Irishmen rose out of 
their embers. 

The bishop who had occupied so prominent a place 
in the movement afterwards retired, on the plea of ill- 
health, to Italy, where he lived for many years a wild 
and scandalous life, retaining the emoluments but 
utterly neglecting the duties of his bishopric, scoffing 
openly at religion, and adopting without disguise the 
lax moral habits of Neapolitan society. His wealth, 
his good-nature, his munificent patronage of art,^ and 
his brilliant social qualities made him very popular, 
and in his old age he was a lover of Lady Hamilton, 
to whom he was accustomed to write in a strain of 
most unepiscopal fervour. He fell into the hands of 
the French in 1799, and was imprisoned at Milan for 
eighteen months. He died near Eome in 1803.^ 

The career of Flood in the Irish Parliament was 

' "We have an amusing illustration of his art taste in an engraving of 
one of the most indecent of the pictures of Albano, ' Actaeon Discovering 
Diana and her Nymphs just Emerging from the Batli/ which is dedicated 
to ' the Earl of Bristol and Lord Bishop of Derry ;' underneath are tlio 
bishop's arms surmounted by the mitre, and a little below the mitre is 
the bishop's motto — ' Je ne I'oublierai jamais.' 

- There is much curious information about the latter years of this 
eccentric bishop in the 'Memoirs of Lady Hamilton,' and in those of the 
Comtesse de Lichteuau. 



100 HENKY FLOOD. 

now raj)idly drawing to a close. In the following year 
he made another effort to induce the Parliament to 
reform its constitution ; but, as he was doubtless well 
aware, such an attempt, when opposed by the Grovern- 
ment and unsupported by the Volunteers, was at that 
time almost hopeless. The Reform Bill, notwith- 
standing the petitions in its favour, was rejected, and 
Flood shortly after put into execution a design that he 
had conceived many years before, of entering the Par- 
liament of England. His failure there is well known. 
His habits had been already formed for an Irish 
audience, and, as Grattan said of him, ' he was an oak 
of the forest too great and too old to be transplanted 
at fifty.' He was also guilty of much imprudence. 
Desiring to act in the most independent manner, he 
proclaimed openly that he would not identify himself 
with either of the great parties in Parliament. He 
thus prejudiced both sides of the House against him, 
and deprived himself of that support which is of such 
great consequence to a debater. He spoke first on the 
India Bill, which ultimately led to the downfall of the 
Coalition Ministry. It was a subject about which he 
knew very little ; but he rose, as a practised speaker 
often does, to make a few remarks in a conversational 
tone, to detect some flaw in a jareceding speaker's 
argument, or to throw light upon some particular 
section of the subject, without intending to make an 
elaborate speech, or to review the entire question. 
Immediately from the lobbies and the coffee-room the 
members came crowding in, anxious to hear a speaker 
of whom such great expectations were entertained. 
He seems to have thought that it would be disrespect- 
ful to those members to sit down at once, so he con- 
tinued extempore, and soon showed his little knowledge 
of the subject. When he concluded, there was a 



niS ENGLISH CAREER. 101 

universal feeling- of disappointment. A member 
named Courtenay rose, and completed his discomfiture 
by a most virulent and satirical attack, which the rules 
of tlie House prevented him from answering. It is 
hardly necessary to say that Courtenay was an Irishman. 
He confessed afterwards to Lord Byron that he had 
been actuated by a personal motive.^ 

After this failure. Flood scarcely ever spoke again. 
Once, however, in 1790, his genius shone out with 
something of its old brilliancy in bringing forward a 
Eeform Bill. His proposition was that 100 members, 
chosen by county liousehold suffrage, should be added 
to the House ; and the speech in which he defended it 
was nauch admired by all parties. Burke said that he 
had retrieved his reputation. Fox declared that his 
proposition was the best that had been proposed, and 
Pitt based his opposition to it almost exclusively upon 
the disturbed state of public affairs. It is to be hoped 
that these praises in some degree soothed his mind, 
which must have been bitterly mortified by his previous 
disappointment. In his reply upon this question, 
when answering some charge that had been brought 
against him, he alluded in a very touching manner to 
the isolation of his position. ' I appeal to you,' he 
said, ' whether my conduct has been that of an advo- 
cate or an agitator ; whether I have often trespassed 
upon your attention ; whether ever, except on a ques- 
tion of importance ; and whether I then wearied you 
with ostentation or prolixity. I am as independent 

' Wraxall, speaking of Flood's failure, says: 'The slow, measured, 
and sententio\is style of enunciation which characterised his eloquence, 
however calculated to excite admiration it might be in the senate of the 
sister kingdom, appeared to English ears cold, stiff, and deficient in 
some of the best recommendations to attention.' This passage is very 
curious, as showing how little the present popular conception of Irish 
eloquence prevailed in the last century. 



102 HENKY FLOOD. 

in fortune and nature as the honourable member him- 
self. I have no fear but that of doing wrong, nor have 
I a hope on the subject but that of doing some service 
before I die. The accident of my situation has not 
made me a partisan ; and I never lamented that situa- 
tion till now that I find myself as unprotected as I 
fear the people of England will be on this occasion.' 
After this he only made one other speech — on the French 
treaty — of any importance. He is said in his last years 
to have retired much from society, and his temper 
became gloomy and morose. He died in 1791. 

When he felt death approaching he requested his 
attendant to leave the room, and he drew his last 
breath alone. Faithful to the end to the interests of 
his country, he left a large property to the Dublin 
University, chiefly for the encouragement of the study 
of Irish, and for the purchase of Irish manuscripts. 

There is something inexpressibly melancholy in the 
life of this man. From his earliest youth his ambition 
seems to have been to identify himself with the freedom 
of his country. But though he attained to a position 
which, before him, had been unknown in Ireland ; 
though the unanimous verdict of his contemporaries 
pronounced him to be one of the greatest intellects 
that ever adorned the Irish Parliament ; and, though 
there is not a single act of his life which may not be 
construed in a sense perfectly in harmony with honour 
and with patriotism, yet his career presents one long- 
series of disappointments and reverses. At an age 
when most statesmen are in the zenith of their influence 
he sank into political impotence. The party he had 
formed discarded him as its leader. The reputation 
he so dearly prized was clouded and assailed ; the prin- 
ciples he had sown germinated and fructified indeed, 
but others reaped their fruit, and he is now scarcely 



DECLINE OF HIS REPUTATION. 103 

remembered except as the object of a powerful invec- 
tive ill Ireland, and as an example of a deplorable 
failure in England. A few pages of oratory, which 
probably at best only represent the substance of his 
speeches, a few youthful poems, a few laboured letters, 
and a biography so meagre and so unsatisfactory that it 
scarcely gives us any insight into his character, are all 
that remain of Henry Flood. The period in which he 
lived, a jealous and uncertain temper, and two or three 
lamentable mistakes of judgment, were fatal to his 
reputation ; and he laboured for a people who have 
usually been peculiarly indifferent to the reputation of 
their great men. We may say of him as Grrattan said of 
Kirwan : ' The curse of Swift was upon him, to have 
been born an Irishman and a man of genius, and to 
have used his talents for his country's good.' 



HENRY GRATTAF. 

A PAPER was found in Swift's desk after his death, con- 
taining a list of his friends, classified as grateful, ungrate- 
ful, and indifferent. In this list the name of Grrattan 
occurs three times, and each time it is marked as grate- 
ful. The family was one of some weight in the country, 
and the father of the subject of the present sketch was 
Recorder and Member for Dublin. As I have already 
had occasion to observe. Dr. Lucas was his colleague 
and his opponent, and a bitter animosity, both personal 
and political, subsisted between them. The Recorder 
seems to have been a man of a violent and overbearing 
temper, firmly wedded to his own opinions, and ex- 
ceedingly intolerant of contradiction. He was greatly 
exasperated with his son for adopting Liberal politics, 
and he carried his resentment so far as to mark his 
displeasure in his will. Henry Grattan was born in 
the year 1746. From his earliest youth he manifested 
the activity of his intellect, and the force and energy 
of his character. Some foolish nursery tales having 
produced in his mind those superstitious fears that are 
so common among children, he determined, when a 
mere boy, to emancipate himself from their control, 
and was accustomed to go at midnight into a church- 
yard near his father's house, where he remained till 
every qualm of terror had subsided. At the University 
he distinguished himself greatly, and acquired a 
passion for the classics, and especially for the great 
orators of antiquity, that never deserted him through 
life. Long before he obtained a seat in Parliament he 



STUDIES ORATORY. 105 

had begun to cultivate eloquence. His especial models 
were Eolingbroke and Junius, and his method was 
constant recitation. He learnt by heart certain pas- 
sages of his speeches, and continually revolved them 
in his mind till he had eliminated all those almost 
imperceptible prolixities that exist in nearly every 
written composition. By this method he brought his 
sentences to a degree of nervousness and of condensa- 
tion that is scarcely paralleled in oratory. Several 
anecdotes are told of the difficulties into which his 
passion for recitation brought him. On one occa- 
sion his landlady in England requested his friends to 
remove that mad young gentleman who was always 
talking to himself, or addressing an imaginary person 
called Mr. Speaker. On another, when apostrophising 
a gibbet in Windsor Forest, he was interrupted by a 
tap on the shoulder, and a curious enquiry as to how 
he had got down. His letters written at this time 
show that he was subject to violent fits of despond- 
ency, and they betray also a morbidness that is singu- 
larly unlike his character in after-years. 

Shortly after leaving the University he was called to 
the Bar, and resided for some time in the Temple, where 
he probably occupied himself much more in the study 
of oratory than of law. He had obtained access to 
the House of Lords, and had come completely imder 
the spell of Lord Chatham's eloquence. He wrote an 
elaborate character of Chatham, which was inserted in 
' Baratariana ; ' and in a letter written some years later 
he gives a long and very minute description of his 
style of speaking. The following extract will be read 
with pleasure, as forming a very vivid description of 
the most effective of British orators : ' He was very 
great, but very odd ; he spoke in a style of conversa- 
tion ; not, however, what I expected. It was not a 



i06 HENRY GRATTAN. 

speech, for he never came with a prepared harangue. 
His style was not regular oratory, like Cicero or Demos- 
thenes, but it was very fine and very elevated, and 
above the ordinary subjects of discourse. . . . Lord 
Mansfield, perhaps, would have argued the case better ; 
Charles Townshend would have made a better speech ; 
but there was in Lord Chatham a grandeur and a 
manner which neither had, and which was peculiar to 
him. What Cicero says in his " Claris Oratoribus " 
exactly applies : " Formse dignitas, corporis motus, 
plenus et artis et venustatis, vocis et suavitas et mag- 
nitudo." His gestvire was always graceful. He was an 
incomparable actor ; had it -not been so he would have 
appeared ridiculous. His address to the tapestry and 
to Lord Effingham's memory required an incomparable 
actor, and he was that actor. His tones were remark- 
ably pleasing. I recollect his pronouncing one word 
— effete — in a soft, charming accent. His son could 
not have pronounced it better. He was often called 
to order. On one occasion he said, "I hope some 
dreadful calamity will befall the country that will 
open the eyes of the King ; " and then he introduced 
the allusion to the figure drawing the curtains of 
Priam, and gave the quotation. He was called to order. 
He stopped and said, "What I have spoken I have spoken 
conditionally, but now I retract the condition. I speak 
absolutely, and I do hope that some signal calamity 
will befall the country ; " and he repeated what he had 
said. He then fired and oratorised, and grew extremely 
eloquent. Ministers, seeing what a difficult character 
they had to deal with, thought it best to let him pro- 
ceed. On one occasion, addressing Lord Mansfield, he 
said, " Who are the evil advisers of his Majesty? Is 
it you? is it you ? is it you?" (pointing to the Minis- 
ters, until he came near Lord Mansfield). There were 



DESCEIPTION OF CIIATirAM. 107 

several lords round him, and Lord Chatham said, " My 
liOrds, please to take your seats." When they had sat 
down, he pointed to Lord Mansfield and said, " Is it 
you ? Methinks Feli:£ trembles." It required a great 
actor to do this. Done by any one else it would have 
been miserable When he came to the argumen- 
tative part of his speech, he lowered his tone so as to 
be scarcely audible ; and he did not lay so much stress 
on those parts as on the great bursts of genius and tlie 
sublime passages. He had studied action, and his 
gesture was graceful, and had a most powerful effect. 
His speeches required good acting, and he gave it to 
them. Their impression was great. His manner was 
dramatic. In this it was said that he was too much of 
a mountebank, but, if so, it was a great mountebank. 
Perhaps he was not so good a debater as his son, but he 
was a much better orator, a better scholar, and a far 
greater man. Great subjects, great empires, great 
characters, effulgent ideas, and classical illustrations, 
formed the material of his speeches.' 

It is curious thatGrattan, wbo was so sensible to the 
advantages of a graceful delivery in others, should 
have been always remarkable for the extreme singu- 
larity and awkwardness of his own. Byron, who other- 
wise admired his speaking exceedingly, called it a 
' harlequin manner.' ^ O'Connell said that he nearly 
swept the ground with his gestures, and the motion of 
his arms has been compared to the rolling of a ship in 
a heavy swell. 

While the genius of Chatham had stimulated the 
ambition of Grattan to the highest degree, the friend- 
ship of Flood was directing his enthusiasm in the 

' This w;is in prose. In his poetry he described Grattan as 

' "With all that Demosthenes wanted endowed, 
And his rival or victor in all he possessed.' 

The Irish Avatar, 



108 HENBY GRATTAN. 

channel of Irish politics. These two men, afterwards 
such bitter rivals, were at first intimate friends ; and 
the experience and the counsel of Flood had un- 
doubtedly great influence in moulding the character 
of Grattan. They declaimed together, they acted 
together in private theatricals, they wrote together in 
' Baratariana,' and they discussed together the prospects 
of their party. 

In 1775 Lord Charlemont brought Grattan into 
Parliament. The circumstances were, in some respects, 
very favourable for the display of his genius, for the 
patriotic party had lost its leader, and there was no one 
to assert its principles with effect. Grattan cannot 
with any justice be accused of having supplanted 
Flood. He simply occupied the position which was 
vacant, and which his extraordinary eloquence natu- 
rally gave him. Whatever opinion might be enter- 
tained among his hearers of the wisdom of his political 
views, or of his judgment, there could be no question 
that he was from the very commencement of his 
career by far the greatest orator of the day. When, 
therefore, the party found themselves deserted by 
their old leader, they naturally rallied around the 
one man whose abilities were sufficient to supply his 
place. 

The eloquence of Grattan, in his best days, was in 
some respects perhaps the finest that has been heard 
in either country since the time of Chatham. Con- 
sidered simply as a debater, he was certainly inferior 
to both Fox and Pitt, and perhaps to Sheridan ; but 
he combined two of the very highest qualities of a great 
orator to a degree that was almost unexampled. No 
British orator except Chatham had an equal power of 
firing an educated audience with an intense enthu- 
siasm, or of animating and inspiring a nation. No 



HIS ELOQUENCE. 109 

British orator except Burke had an equal power of 
sowing his speeches with profound aphorisms and 
associating transient questions with eternal truths. His 
thoughts naturally crystallised into epigrams ; his 
arguments were condensed with such admirable force 
and clearness that they assumed almost the appear- 
ance of axioms ; and they were often interspersed with 
sentences of concentrated poetic beauty, which flashed 
upon the audience with all the force of sudden inspir- 
ation, and which were long remembered and repeated. 
Some of his best speeches combined much of the value 
of philosophical dissertations with all the charm of the 
most brilliant declamation. I know, indeed, none in 
modern times, except those of Burke, from which the 
student of politics can derive so many profound and 
valuable maxims of political wisdom, and none which 
are more useful to those who seek to master that art of 
condensed energy of expression in which he almost 
equalled Tacitus. His eloquence had nothing of the 
harmonious and unembarrassed flow of Pitt or of 
Plunket ; and he had no advantages of person and no 
grace and dignity of gesture; but his strange, writhing- 
contortions, and the great apparent effort he often dis- 
played, added an effect of surprise to the sudden gleams 
of luminous argument — to the severe and concentrated 
declamation — to the terseness of statement and the 
exquisite felicities of expression with which he adorned 
every discussion. O'Connell, comparing him to Pitt, 
said that he wanted the sustained dignity of that 
speaker, but that Pitt's speeches were always speedily 
forgotten, while Grattan was constantly saying things 
that were remembered. His speeches show no wit and 
no skill in the lighter forms of sarcasm ; but he was 
almost imri vailed in crushing invective, in delinea- 
tions of character, and in brief, keen arguments. In 



^ 



110 HENRY GRATTAN. 



carrying on a train of sustained reasoning he was not so 
happy. Flood is said to have been his superior ; and 
none of his speeches in this respect are comparable to 
that of Fox on the Westminster scrutiny. 

The extraordinary excellence of his speaking con- 
sisted much more in its wonderful positive merits than 
in its purity or freedom from defects. There was no 
conscious affectation in liis nature, but he had an 
intense mannerism, which appeared equally in his 
speaking and in his private life — in almost everything 
he said or wrote. He rarely said simple things in 
a simple way ; and the quaint peculiarities of his 
diction appeared as strongly in his conversation and 
in his unstudied replies as in his elaborate orations. 
His compositions were almost always overloaded with 
epigram and antithesis, and his metaphors were often 
forced, sometimes confused and inaccurate, and occa- 
sionally even absurd. But with all these defects very 
few speakers of any age or country have equalled him 
in originality, in fire, and in persuasive force. In one 
respect he would probably have had more influence in 
our day than in his own, for the reporter's pen would 
have concealed most of his defects and magnified most 
of his merits. The political orator now speaks less to 
those who are assembled within the walls of Parliament 
than to the public outside. The charm of manner, the 
music of the modulated tone, have lost their old supre- 
macy, while the power of condensed and vivid expression 
has acquired an increased value. He who can furnish the 
watchwords of party, the epigrams of debate, will now 
exercise the greatest and most abiding influence. A 
hundred pens will reproduce his words, and they will 
be repeated as proverbs when the most brilliant dis- 
plays of diffusive rhetoric are forgotten. 

Much of the great influence of the speaking of 



MAINTAINS THE INDEPENDENCE OF PARLIAMENT. lU 

Grattan was undoubtedly due to moral causes. There 
was a certain transparent simplicity and rectitude of 
purpose, a manifest disinterestedness, a fervid enthu- 
siasm of patriotism in his character, which added 
greatly to the effect of his eloquence, and gave him an 
ascendency that was exercised by none of his contem- 
poraries in Ireland. In purely intellectual endowments 
he was probably equalled by Plunket ; but Plunket 
never exercised even a perceptible influence upon 
public opinion, while Grattan in a great degree formed 
the character of the nation. From the very beginning 
of his career his eloquence became the great vivifying 
principle in the patriotic party, and every question 
received a new impulse from his advocacy. 

I have already enumerated the principal objects of 
the party with which Grattan was connected. He 
assisted Burgh and Flood in carrying the free-trade 
question to a triumphant issue. He endeavovired, 
though unsuccessfully, to place the Irish army under 
the control of the Parliament ; and, above all, he 
gave an unprecedented impulse to the great cause of 
parliamentary independence. In April 1780 he moved 
' that no person on earth, save the King, Lords, and 
Commons of Ireland, has a right to make laws for 
Ireland.' This motion he introduced with a speech of 
splendid eloquence, and the effect produced by it was 
very great. Flood, however, perceived that it was 
somewhat premature and would have been defeated, 
and at his suggestion it was withdrawn. This debate 
had a considerable effect in eliciting the feelings of 
the people, and the sentiments of the Parliament are 
sufficiently shown by the letters of Lord Buckingham, 
who was then Viceroy, to the Government in England. 
' It is with the utmost concern,' he wrote, ' I must ac- 
quaint your lordship that although so many gentlemen 



112 HENRY GEATTAN. 

expressed their concern that the subject had been in- 
troduced, the sense of the House against the obliga- 
tion of any statutes of the Parliament of Great Britain 
within this kingdom is represented to me to have been 
almost unanimous.' Shortly after this debate the 
Volunteer Convention assembled at Dungannon to 
throw their influence into the scale. Grattan, in 
co-operation with Flood and Charlemont, drew up a 
series of resolutions, which were adopted unanimously, 
asserting the Irish independence ; and Grattan, alone, 
drew up another resolution expressing the gratification 
with which the Volunteers had witnessed the relaxation 
of the penal code. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate 
the importance of this last resolution. It marked the 
solemn union between the two great sections of Irish- 
men for the purpose of obtaining the recognition of 
their country's rights. It showed that the old policy 
of governing Ireland by the division of her sects had 
failed ; and that if the independence of Parliament 
were to be withheld, it must be withheld in opposition 
to a nation united and in arms. 

The Government at length yielded. The Duke of 
Portland was sent over as Lord-Lieutenant, with per- 
mission to concede the required boon. At the last 
moment an effort was made to procure a delay, but 
Grattan refused to grant it ; and on the 16th of April 
1782, amid an outburst of almost unparalleled enthu- 
siasm, the declaration of independence was brought 
forward. On that day a large body of the Volunteers 
were drawn up in front of the old Parliament House of 
Ireland. Far as the eye could stretch the morning 
sun glanced upon their weapons and upon their flags ; 
and it was through their parted ranks that Grattan 
passed to move the emancipation of his country. Never 
had a great orator a nobler or a more pleasing task. It 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 113 

■was to proclaim that the strife of six centuries had 
terminated ; that the cause for which so much blood 
had been shed, and so much genius expended in vain, 
had at last triumphed ; and tliat a new era had 
dawned upon Ireland. Doubtless on that day many 
minds reverted to the long night of oppression and 
crime through which Ireland had struggled towards 
that conception which had been as the pillar of fire on 
her path. But now at last the promised land seemed 
reached. The dream of Swift and of Molyneux was 
realised. The blessings of independence were recon- 
ciled with the blessings of connection ; and in an 
emancipated Parliament the patriot saw the guarantee 
of the future prosperity of his country and the Shekinah 
of liberty in the land. It was impossible indeed not 
to perceive that there was still much to be done — 
disqualifications to be removed, anomalies to be recti- 
fied, corruption to be overcome ; but Grrattan at least 
firmly believed that Ireland possessed the vital force 
necessary for all this, that the progress of a healthy 
public opinion would regenerate and reform the Irish 
Parliament as it regenerated and reformed the Par- 
liament of England; and that every year the sense 
of independence would quicken the sympathy between 
the people and their representatives. It was indeed 
a noble triumph, and the orator was worthy of the 
cause. In a few glowing sentences he painted the 
dreary struggle that had passed, the magnitude of 
the victory that had been achieved, and the grandeur 
of the prospects that were unfolding. 'I am now,' 
he exclaimed, 'to address a free people. Ages have 
passed away, and this is the first moment in which 
you could be distinguished by that appellation. I have 
spoken on the subject of your liberty so often that I 
have nothing to add, and have only to admire by what 



114 HENRY GEATTAN. 



m 



heaven-directed steps you have proceeded until the 
whole faculty of the nation is braced up to the act of 
her o"\vn deliverance. I found Ireland on her knees ; I 
watched over her with a paternal solicitude ; I have 
traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms 
to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your 
genius has prevailed ! Ireland is now a nation. In 
that character I hail her, and, bowing in lier august 
presence, I say esto perpetua /' 

The concession was made, on the whole, with no un- 
grudging hand, and in a few years most of the badges 
of subserviency which the Irish Protestants had worn 
were discarded. Between 1778 and 1782 the com- 
mercial restrictions were almost all abolished ; the 
judges were made immovable ; the duration of Parlia- 
ment was limited ; the army was placed in subordi- 
nation to the Parliament ; the appellate jurisdiction 
of the House of Lords, which had been destroyed in 
1719, was restored, and the independence of the Irish 
Legislature was recognised. Immediately after the con- 
cession of independence a day of thanksgiving was 
appointed to consecrate the triumph, and a vote for 
the support of twenty thousand sailors for the English 
navy was agreed upon. Tliis last was almost the first 
measure of the emancipated Parliament. In this, as 
in every other period of his career, Grattan was anxious 
to show in the most imequivocal manner the sympathy 
of Ireland with England, and the compatibility of an 
ardent love of independence with a devoted attachment 
to the connection. He said himself, ' I am desirous 
above all things, next to the liberty of the country, not 
to accustom the Irish mind to an alien or suspicious 
habit with regard to Great Britain.' 

"While the greatest Irishmen in Ireland were thus 
working out the freedom of their country, the greatest 



CONTROVERSY WITH FLOOD. 115 

Irishman in England wrote to encourage thom and to 
express his approval of the work. ' I am convinced,' 
wrote Burke to Lord Charlemont, ' that no reluctant 
tie can be a strong one, and that a natural, cheerful 
alliance, will be a far more secure link of connection 
than any princijsle of subordination borne with grudg- 
ing and discontent.' The Whig party, who were for a 
brief period in power, appear to have concurred in 
this view; and Fox, in one of his speeches in 1797, 
expressed it very unequivocally. ' I would have the 
Irish government,' he said, ' regulated by Irish notions 
and Irish prejudices, and I am convinced that the 
more she is under Irish government the more she will 
be bound to English interests.' ' 

The Parliament at this time determined to mark its 
recognition of the services of Grrattan by a grant of 
100,000L Grattan, however, refused to receive so 
large a sum, and was with some difficulty induced to 
accept half. This grant enabled him to devote himself 
exclusively to the service of the country without 
practising at the Bar, to which he had been called. 

I need not revert at length to the question of Simple 
Kepeal, which I have already so fully considered. The 
arguments on each side of that controversy must be 
admitted to have been very nicely balanced, and the 
authorities were also very evenly divided. Grattan 
reckoned among the supporters of his view Charlemont, 
Fox, the Irish cliief justices and chief baron, and 
several other Irish legal authorities. He had, however, 
injured his cause greatly by bringing forward a resolu- 
tion declaring that all who asserted that England had 
authority over Ireland were enemies to the country — a 
resolution which was wholly indefensible, which Flood 
most triumphantly assailed, and which, after a short 

' Quoted by Lord J. Russell in 1837. See Ann. Eeg. 1837, p. 31. 



116 HENRY GRATTAN. 

discussion, was witlidrawn. He was also, as it appears 
to me, guilty of a grave error in not urging at this 
time more vehemently the question of Pai'liamentary 
Eeform. After their famous conflict, the two rivals 
co-operated successfully in opposing some commercial 
arrangements known as Orde's Propositions, which 
were brought forward in 1785, and which, by denying 
the Irish Parliament the right of initiation on com- 
mercial matters, trenched upon the independence of 
Ireland. 

In December 1783 Pitt's Ministry began. It appears, 
from one of the letters of Pitt, that at the beginning 
of his career he contemplated reforming the Irish as 
well as the English Parliament ; but in this, as in 
nearly every portion of liis policy, he speedily apostatised 
to the views of the Tory party, who had brought him 
into 23ower, and resisted every remedial measure which 
was likely to prove in the least embarrassing or danger- 
ous to his Ministry. During many years of the Ministry 
of Pitt which preceded the Union, the Irish adminis- 
tration almost uniformly opposed every effort to reform 
the Parliament. One of the greatest causes of com- 
plaint was the Pension List. The enormity of the 
grievance is sufficiently shown by the fact that the 
money spent in pensions in Ireland was not merely 
relatively, but absolutely, greater than was expended 
for that purpose in England ; that the pension list 
trebled in the first thirty years of George III. ; and 
that in 1793 it amounted to no less than 124,000^. 
Eepeated efforts were made to reduce this list, which 
was so detrimental to the disordered finances of the 
country, and so fatal to the purity of Parliament. 
G-rattan brought forward the subject in 1785 and in 
1791, but on both occasions Government threw their 
influence into the opposite scale, and he was defeated. 



IRISn ECCLESIASTICAL IIISTORy. 117 

In 1789 Grattan disagreed with Pitt's Ministry on the 
Eegency question, and maintained with Fox that the 
madness of the King was to be regarded as tantamount 
to his death, and that while it lasted his son rightfully 
possessed the full powers of royalty. The Irish Parlia- 
ment adopted this view, and there was some danger of 
a serious collision with England, when the recovery of 
the King solved the difficulty. But the great question 
which at this time agitated the public mind was the 
position of the Roman Catholics — a question which 
has long been the most fertile cause of dissension and 
controversy in Ireland. 

There are few more curious pages in ecclesiastical 
history than that which records the various phases of 
Christianity in Ireland. Its first introduction is lost 
in the obscm'ity of antiquity, but we find it existing, 
though in a very feeble condition, in the middle of the 
fifth century, when Palladius and St. Patrick came 
over to re-animate it. Palladius was sent from Eome 
by Pope Celestine ; his mission was wholly unsuc- 
cessful, and he very soon left Ireland. From what 
quarter St. Patrick derived his authority is a question 
which is still fiercely debated between the members of 
the rival creeds. It seems plain that under his auspices 
Chiistianity spread over the entire island ; that the 
Church continued for several centuries in a flourishing 
condition ; that it existed very independently of Rome ; 
and that in the famous Easter controversy it warmly 
upheld the Oriental opinion. 

The Irish monasteries soon became famed for the 
piety and the learning that emanated from them, and 
many pilgrims from many lands sought instruction 
within their walls. Amongst others, Oswald, the son 
of the King of Northumbria, was educated and con- 
verted to Christianity by the Irish monks ; and, when 



118 HENRY GRATTAN. 

he came to the throne, he invited his old preceptors to 
plant a mission in his dominions, and established the 
monastery of Lindisfarne. It was the rare fortune of 
the monks of Lindisfarne to have three successive 
priors who were so stainless in their character, so 
winning- in their manners, and so gentle in their 
controversies, that they prepossessed all who knew 
them in behalf of their religion, and extorted expres- 
sions of the warmest admiration even from an historian ' 
who was an opponent of their views. Their zeal was 
equal to their gentleness, and their success to their 
deserts, and by their means the light of Christianity 
was spread over nearly the whole of the north of 
England. At last, however, they came into collision 
with the Eoman party on the Easter question ; and 
the genius and the energy of Wilfrid, the Roman 
champion, having gained the victory, they returned to 
their own country. In Ireland the Pope obtained a 
certain influence amid the civil wars that distracted the 
land, but his authority was never generally recognised 
till the English invasion. The English King, having 
obtained letters from two successive Pontiffs conferring 
Ireland upon him, on account of its separation from the 
See of Rome, and on condition of the payment of Peter's 
pence, convened a coimcil at Cashel, which formally im- 
posed the Roman yoke on the nation from which Eng- 
land had received a Christianity separate from Rome. 

If we overleap the next few centuries, we find that 
at the time of the Reformation Ireland was the only 
northern country in which the reformed tenets never 
made way. The explanation of this phenomenon is 
beyond all question to be found in the policy of Eng- 
land. The Irish regarded Protestantism as identified 
with a nation which was the object of their deepest 

> Bede. 



POLICY OF CROMWELL. 119 

abhorrence. Elizabeth, who was its great representa- 
tive, had spread desolation and disaster over the greater 
part of their land. She had shown herself anxious to 
propagate the Reformed faith, but still more anxious 
to eradicate the nationality of Ireland. To effect the 
former object she enjoined that the Anglican service 
should everywhere be celebrated ; to effect the latter 
she forbade its being celebrated in the Irish tongue. 
Where the people could not understand English, it was 
gravely ordered that the service might be translated 
into Latin. The consequence was what might have 
been anticipated. The people continued in their old 
faith, and England was thus the means of consolidating 
and perpetuating that religion which has ever proved 
the most insuperable obstacle to her policy. 

The next great representative of Protestantism in 
England was Cromwell, whose Irish policy is well 
known. An illustrious living writer has discovered a 
transcendent, and even religious, grandeur in the mas- 
sacres of Drogheda and of Wexford, but it must be 
admitted that they were not calculated to prepossess 
the Irish mind in favour of Protestantism. We may 
observe, too, that the Puritans acted throughout as 
religionists. Every soldier was an ardent theologian, 
and never more so than when, with a text from Joshua 
in his mouth, he was hewing the misbeliever to the 
ground. The war of races and the recollection of the 
Irish massacre seem to have all given way to the fierce 
hatred of the Man of Sin, that had steeled every heart 
and whetted every sword. Had Cromwell's policy been 
persisted in for a few generations, Catholicism in 
Ireland might have perished in blood ; but, as it was, 
it only deepened the chasm between the two religions, 
and inspired the Roman Catholics with a still more 
intense hatred of the dominant creed. 



120 HENRY GRATTAN. 

The last great Protestant ruler of England was Wil- 
liam III., who is identified in Ireland with the humi- 
liation of the Boyne, with the destruction of Irish 
trade, and with the broken treaty of Limerick. The 
ceaseless exertions of the extreme Protestant party 
have made him more odious in the eyes of the people 
than he deserves to be ; for he was personally far more 
tolerant than the great majority of his contemporaries, 
and the penal code was chiefly enacted under his suc- 
cessors. It required, indeed, four or five reigns to 
elaborate a system so ingeniously contrived to de- 
moralise, to degrade, and to impoverish the people of 
Ireland. By this code the Eoman Catholics were abso- 
lutely excluded from the Parliament, from the magis- 
tracy, from the corporations, from the bench, and from 
the bar. They could not vote at parliamentary elec- 
tions or at vestries. They could not act as constables, 
or sherififs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, 
or become solicitors, or even hold the positions of 
gamekeeper or watchman. Schools were established 
to bring up their children as Protestants ; and if they 
refused to avail themselves of these, they were deli- 
berately consigned to hopeless ignorance, being ex- 
cluded from the University, and debarred, under crush- 
ing penalties, from acting as schoolmasters, as ushers, 
or as private tutors, or from sending their cliildren 
abroad to obtain the instruction they were refused at 
home. They could not marry Protestants ; and if such 
a marriage were celebrated it was annulled by law, and 
the priest who officiated might be hung. They could 
not buy land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from 
Protestants, or hold life annuities, or leases for more 
than thirty-one years, or any lease on such terms that 
the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the rent. 
If any Catholic leaseholder by his industry so increased 



THE PENAL LAWS. 121 

liis profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did 
not immediately make a corresponding increase in his 
payments, any Protestant who gave the information 
could enter into possession of his farm. If any Catholic 
had secretly purchased either his old forfeited estate, 
or any other land, any Protestant who informed against 
him might become the proprietor. The few Catholic 
landholders who remained were deprived of the right 
which all other classes possessed of bequeathing their 
lands as they pleased. If their sons continued Catho- 
lics, it was divided equally between them. If, how- 
ever, the eldest son consented to apostatise, the estate 
was settled upon him, the father from that hour be- 
came only a life tenant, and lost all power of selling, 
mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of it. If the wife 
of a Catholic abandoned the religion of her husband, 
she was immediately free from his control, and the 
Chancellor was empowered to assign to her a certain 
proportion of her husband's property. If any child, 
however young, professed itself a Protestant, it was 
at once taken from the father's care, and the Chan- 
cellor could oblige the father to declare upon oath the 
value of his property, both real and personal, and could 
assign for the present maintenance and future portion 
of the converted child such proportion of that pro- 
perty as the court might decree. No Catholic could be 
guardian either to his own children or to those of 
another person : and therefore a Catholic who died 
while his children were minors had the bitterness of 
reflecting upon his death-bed that they must pass into 
the care of Protestants. An annuity of from twenty 
to forty pounds was provided as a bribe for every 
priest who would become a Protestant. To convert 
a Protestant to Catholicism was a capital offence. 
In every walk of life the Catholic was pursued by 

7 



122 HENRT GRATTAN. 

persecution or restriction. Except in the linen trade, 
he could not have more than two apprentices. He 
could not possess a horse of the value of more than five 
pounds, and any Protestant, on giving- him five pounds, 
could take his horse. He was compelled to pay double 
to the militia. He was forbidden, except under parti- 
cular conditions, to live in Galway or Limerick. In 
case of war with a Catholic power, the Catholics were 
obliged to reimburse the damage done by the enemy's 
privateers. The Legislature, it is true, did not venture 
absolutely to suppress their Avorship, but it existed 
only by a doubtful connivance, — stigmatised as if it 
were a species of licensed prostitution, and subject to 
conditions which, if they had been enforced, would 
have rendered its continuance impossible. An old law 
which i^rohibited it, and another which enjoined atten- 
dance at the Anglican worship, remained unrepealed, 
and might at any time be revived ; and the former 
was, in fact, enforced during the Scotch rebellion of 
1715. The parish priests, who alone were allowed to 
officiate, were compelled to be registered, and were 
forbidden to keep curates, or to officiate anywhere ex- 
cept in their own parishes. The chapels might not 
have bells or steeples. No crosses might be publicly 
erected. Pilgrimages to the holy wells were forbidden. 
Not only all monks and friars, but also all Catholic arch- 
bishops, bishops, deacons, and other dignitaries, were 
ordered by a certain day to leave the country ; and if 
after that date they were foimd in L'eland they were 
liable to be first imprisoned and then banished ; and 
if after that banishment they returned to discharge 
their duty in their dioceses, they were liable to the 
punishment of death. To facilitate the discovery of 
offences against the code, two justices of the peace 
might at any time compel any Catholic of eighteen 



THE PENAL LAWS. 123 

years of age to declare when and where he last heard 
mass, what persons were present, and who officiated ; 
and if he refused to give evidence they might imprison 
him for twelve months, or until he paid a fine of 
twenty pounds. Anyone who harboured ecclesiastics 
from beyond the seas was subject to fines which for 
the third offence amounted to the confiscation of all 
his goods. A graduated scale of rewards was offered 
for the discovery of Catholic bishops, priests, and 
schoolmasters ; and a resolution of the House of Com- 
mons pronounced ' the prosecuting and informing 
against Papists ' ' an honourable service to the Govern- 
ment.' 

Such were the principal articles of this famous code 
— a code which Eurke truly described as ' well digested 
and well disposed in all its parts ; a machine of wise 
and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the 
oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a 
people, and the debasement in them of human nature 
itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity 
of man.' It was framed by a small minority of the 
nation for the oppression of the majority who remained 
faithful to the religion of their fathers. It was framed 
by men who boasted that their creed rested upon pri- 
vate judgment, and whose descendants are never weary 
of declaiming upon the intolerance of Popery ; and it 
was directed, in many of its provisions, against mere 
religious observances ; and was in all its parts so strictly 
a code of religious persecution, that any Catholic 
might be exempted from its operation by simply for- 
saking his religion. It was framed and enforced, 
although by the Treaty of Limerick the Catholics had 
been guaranteed such privileges in the exercise of their 
religion as they enjoyed in the reign of Charles II., 
although the Sovereign at the same time promised, as 



124 HENRY GRATTAN. 

soon as his affairs wovild permit, ' to summon a Parlia- 
ment in this kingdom, and to endeavour to procure 
the said Eoman Catholics such further security in that 
particular as may preserve them from any disturbance 
on account of their religion,' although not a single 
overt act of treason was proved against them, and 
although they remained passive spectators of two rebel- 
lions which menaced the very existence of the Protes- 
tant dynasty in England. 

It is impossible for any Irish Protestant, whose mind 
is not wholly perverted by religious bigotry, to look 
back without shame and indignation to the penal code. 
The annals of persecution contain many more saugui- 
nary pages. They contain no instance of a series of 
laws more deliberately and ingeniously framed to debase 
their victims, to bribe them in every stage of their 
life to abandon their convictions, and to sow dissension 
and distrust within the family circle. That the Irish 
Parliament, in the last years of William, and in the 
reigns of his two successors, was one of the most perse- 
cuting legislative assemblies that have ever sat, cannot 
reasonably be questioned. Eut, without descending to 
the moral sophistry which some writers have employed 
in endeavouring to palliate these laws, there is some- 
thing that may be truly said for the Irish Protestants. 
The laws which had been passed in England and by 
the English Parliament under William, for the oppres- 
sion of Catholics, were on the whole even more stringent 
than those which were subsequently passed in Ireland, 
and some of the worst Irish Acts were simply tran- 
scripts of English laws. The beginning of the Irish 
penal code was a law passed in 1691 by the English 
Parliament for excluding all Catholics from the Irish 
one. The Irish Protestants sometimes surpassed in 
bigotry the wishes of the English Cabinet, but yet a 



IHE PENAL LAWS. 125 

long succession of Lord-Lieutenants, speaking as the 
representatives of the English Grovernment, urged 
increased severity against the ' common enemy,' and 
among these Governors we find such men as Carteret 
and Chesterfield. The spirit in which Ireland was 
systematically governed in the early part of the 
eighteenth century was well illustrated by the speech 
of the Lords Justices to the Parliament in 1715, in 
which they said, ' We must recommend to you, in the 
present conjuncture, such unanimity in your resolu- 
tions as may once more put an end to all other dis- 
tinctions in Ireland than that of Protestant and Papist.' 
The time when the Irish Parliament was most persecu- 
ting, and the Irish Protestants were most fanatical, was 
the time when the first was absolutely subservient to 
foreign control, and when the latter considered them- 
selves merely as a garrison in an enemy's country. No 
sooner had a national spirit arisen among the Protes- 
tants than the spirit of sectarianism declined. The 
penal laws were never for any considerable time en- 
forced in their full severity, and some parts of them 
— especially those restricting the Catholic worship, 
banishing bishops and friars, and prohibiting Catholic 
schools — became in the latter and the greater part of 
their existence a mere dead letter. Much property 
thq,t would otherwise have passed to Protestants was 
retained in Catholic hands by legal fictions and by the 
assistance or with the connivance of Protestants, and 
the emancipated Parliament of Ireland carried the 
policy of religious liberty much farther than the 
Parliament of England. 

The economical and moral effects of the penal laws 
were, however, profoundly disastrous. The productive 
energies of the nation were fatally diminished. Almost 
all Catholics of energy and talent who refused to 



126 HENRY GEATTAN. 

abandon their faith emigrated to foreign lands. The 
relation of classes was permanently vitiated ; for almost 
all the proprietary of the country belonged to one 
religion, while the great majority of their tenants were 
of another. The Catholics, excluded from almost every 
possibility of eminence, deprived of their natural 
leaders, and consigned by the liegislature to utter 
ignorance, soon sank into the condition of broken and 
dispirited helots. A total absence of industrial virtues, 
a cowering and abject deference to authority, a reck- 
lessness about the future, a love of secret illegal com- 
binations, became general among them. Above all, 
they learnt to regard law as merely the expression of 
force, and its moral weight was utterly destroyed. For 
the greater part of a century the main object of the 
Legislature was to extirpate a religion by the encourage- 
ment of some of the worst and the punishment of some 
of the best qualities of our nature. Its rewards were 
reserved for the informer, for the hypocrite, for the 
undutiful son, or for the faithless wife. Its penalties 
were directed against religious constancy and the 
honest discharge of ecclesiastical duty. 

It would, indeed, be scarcely possible to conceive a 
more infamous system of legal tyranny than that which 
in the middle of the eighteenth century crushed every 
class and almost every interest in Ireland. The Par- 
liament had been deprived of every vestige of inde- 
pendence. The English House of Lords, by an act of 
what appears to have been pure usurpation, had in 
1719 assumed to itself the right of final judicature in 
Irish cases, and deprived the Irish House of Lords of 
all judicial powers. The English Chancellor, Lord 
Macclesfield, had laid down the doctrine that 'the 
English Courts of Justice have a superintendent power 
over those of Ireland,' and are able to reverse their 



DErRBSSION OF ALL CLASSES. 127 

sentences. The Irish judges might at any time he 
removed. JManufacturiug and commercial industry had 
been deliberately crushed for the benefit of English 
manufactm-ers, and the couatry was reduced to such a 
state of poverty that in 1779 the Grovernment was 
compelled to borrow 50,000^. from England and 
20,000Z. from a private individual, to pay its troops. 
At the same time a gigantic and ever-increasing pension 
list was drawn from the scanty resources of the nation, 
and was expended partly in corrupting its representa- 
tives and partly in rewarding Englishmen or foreigners. 
The mistresses of Greorge I., the Queen Dowager of 
Prussia, sister of Greorge II., the Sardinian ambassador 
who negotiated the Peace of Paris, were all on the 
Irish pension lists. The most honourable and most 
lucrative positions in Ireland were chiefly held by 
Englishmen. The Lord-Lieutenant, the Chief Secre- 
tary> and most of the other foremost political officers, 
were always Englishmen. During the whole of the 
eighteenth century there was not a single instance of 
an Irishman holding the office of Archbishop of 
Armagh ; and of the eighteen Archbishops of Dublin 
and Cashel, ten were Englishmen, as were also nearly 
all the chancellors and a large proportion of the 
bishops and judges. And, while even the favoured 
minority of the Irish people were thus systematically 
depressed, the great majority were deprived of all poli~ 
tical privileges, excluded from almost all means of 
acquiring weath, reduced by law into a pariah class, 
and exposed to demoralising influences which even t9 
the present day have left their traces upon the national 
character. 

There can be no question that in the higher ranks 
of Catholics the penal laws produced a large amount of 
formal apostacy. The desire of the Catholic landlord 



128 HENRY GRATTAN. 

to keep liis property in his family was often stronger 
than his religious feeling, and among professional men 
very little scruple appears to have been felt. In a 
remarkable letter to the Duke of Newcastle, written in 
the early part of 1727, Primate Boulter complains 
that ' the practice of the law from the top to the 
bottom is at present mostly in the hands of new con- 
verts, who give no farther security on this account than 
producing a certificate of their having received the 
Sacrament in the Church of England or Ireland, which 
several of those who were Papists obtain on the road 
hither, and demand to be admitted barrister in virtue 
of it at their arrival ; and several of them have Popish 
wives, and mass said in their houses, and breed up 
their children Papists. Things are at present so bad 
with us that if about six should be removed from the 
the Bar to the Bench here, there will not be a barrister 
of note left that is not a convert.' In order to check 
this state of things, a number of enactments were made 
to compel converts to educate their children as Protes- 
tants, and to subject those who refused and those who 
married Papist wives to the same disabilities as if they 
had not professed themselves Protestants. But the 
movement of conversion to Protestantism was only in 
the upper classes ; and it is a singularly curious fact 
that at the worst period of the penal laws poor Protes- 
tants were continually lapsing into Catholicism, while 
the poor Catholics remained steadfast in tueir faith. 
Primate Boulter, to check the movement, founded the 
charter schools, which were intended to be the only 
means of educating the Irish poor, and which were 
essentially proselytising. ' I can assure you,' he writes 
to the Bishop of London, 'the Papists are here so 
numerous that it highly concerns us in point of in- 
terest, as well as out of concern for the salvation of 



THE PENAL LAWS. 129 

those pool' creatures who arc our fellow-subjects, to try 
all possible means to bring them and theirs over to 
the knowledge of the true religion ; and one of the 
most likely methods we can think of is, if possible, 
instructing and converting the young generation ; for 
instead of converting those that are adult, we are daily 
losing several of our meaner people, who go off to 

Popery The ignorance and obstinacy of the 

adult Papists is such that there is not much hope of 
converting them.' 

The history of the penal laws should, indeed, furnish 
a lasting warning to persecutors of all religions. 
Arthur Young asserts that the numerical proportion of 
the Roman Catholics in Ireland was not even dimi- 
nished, if anything the reverse ; and that it was ad- 
mitted, by those who asserted the contrary, that it would 
take 4,000 years, according to the then rate of pro- 
gress, to convert them. It was stated in Parliament 
that only 4,055 had conformed in 71 years under the 
system ; and what little the religion may have lost in 
number it gained in intensity. The poorer classes in 
Ireland emerged from their long ordeal, penetrated 
with an attachment to their religion almost unpa- 
ralleled in Europe. With the exception of the inha- 
bitants of Bavaria and the Tyrol, there is, perhaps, 
no nation in Europe whose character has been so 
completely moulded and permeated by it, or in which 
sceptical doubts are more completely unknown. 

The code perished at last by its own atrocity. It 
became after a time so out of harmony with the pre- 
vailing tone of Irish opinion that it ceased to be 
enforced, and the Irish Protestants took the initiative 
in obtaining its mitigation. In 1768 a Bill for this 
purpose passed without a division in the Irish Parlia- 
ment, but was lost in England. In 1774, 1778, 1782, 



130 HENET GEATTAN. 

and 1792, several Eelief Bills became law. By these 
Acts the Eoman Catholics were admitted to most of 
the privileges of their fellow-subjects, except to poli- 
tical power. They still laboured under three great 
disqualifications : they could not possess the elective 
franchise, they could not sit in Parliament, and they 
could not rise to the higher positions in the legal or 
the military professions. Public opinion had begun 
to show itself in their favour.* As I have already 
noticed, the Volunteers, who were at first exclusively 
Protestants, and who were recruited chiefly in the 
North, soon admitted Catholics into their ranks, and 
would probably have gone further but for the in- 
fluence of Charlemont and Flood. Burke espoused 
their cause warmly, wrote a petition for them, exerted 
all his eloquence in their behalf, and sent over his son 
to assist them. But the man to whom they owed 
the most was undoubtedly Henry Grrattan. He was 
almost the only Irishman of note in Ireland who 
at that time ceaselessly advocated their unqualified 

' An acute observer, writing in 1770, thus described the religious 
state of Ireland: ' The rigour of Popish bigotry is softening very fast, 
the Protestants are losing all bitter remembra^^ce of those evils which 
their ancestors suflFered, and the two sects are insensibly gliding into 
the same common interests. The Protestants, through apprehensions 
from the superior numbers of the Catholics, were eager to secure them- 
selves in the powerful protection of an English Minister, and to gain 
this were ready to comply with his most exorbitant demands ; the 
Catholics were alike willing to embarrass the Protestants as their 
natural foes ; but awakening from this delusion, they begin to condemn 
their past follies, reflect with shame on having so long played the game 
of an artful enemy, and are convinced that without unanimity they 
never can obtain such consideration as may entitle them to demand, 
with any prospect of success, the just and common rights of mankind. 
Religious bigotry is losing its force everywhere. Commercial and 
not religious interests are the objects of almost every nation in Europe.' 
— Preface to the edition of Molt/neux's ' Case of Ireland,' which wpjpeared 
in 1770. 



ADVOCATES EMANCIPATION. 131 

emancipation. Flood, Charlcmont, and Lucas had a 
different theory. They foresaw that the admission of 
the Eoman Catholics to political equality would sooner 
or later prove incompatible with the establishment of 
the Church of the minority ; they were not prepared 
to surrender that establishment, and they therefore 
maintained that while the Eoman Catholics should be 
admitted to perfect toleration, they should not be 
admitted to political power. This distinction Grrattan 
refused to recognise. He argued that to exclude the 
great bulk of the people from Parliament on account 
of their religion was to inflict upon them a positive 
injury, and to deprive them of all security for their toler- 
ation. ' Civil and religious liberty,' he said in one of 
his speeches, ' depends on political power ; the commu- 
nity that has no share directly or indirectly in political 
power has no security for its political liberty.' He 
supported the establishment warmly and consistently,^ 
but he made a vigorous effort, in 1788, to substitute 
some other mode of payment for the tithes, which were 
chiefly taken from the Roman Catholics. He believed 
also, like most eminent men of his generation, that 
the difference between the two religions was much 
exaggerated ; that it was continually lessening, and 
that the process of assimilation would be greatly ac- 
celerated by the removal of the religious disabilities. 
His speeches are full of intimations of this opinion. 
'Bigotry may survive persecution, but it can never 

' In a letter to the Lord Mayor and SherifFs of Dublin, on June 1, 
1 792, ho said : ' I love the Eoman Catholic ; I am a friend to his liberty, 
but it is only inasmuch as his liberty is entirely consistent with your 
ascendency, and an addition to the strength and freedom of the Pro- 
testant community.' — Miscellaneous Works, p. 282. An Irish Protestant 
in the last century could perhaps hardly write or think otherwise, and 
it by no means follows that if he lived now his opinion would be the 
siime. 



132 HENKY GEATTAN. 

survive toleration.' ' What Luther did for us, philo- 
sophy has done in some degree for the Koman Catholics, 
and their religion has undergone a silent reformation ; 
and both divisions of Christianity, imless they have 
lost their understanding, must have lost their ani- 
mosity, though they have retained their distinctions.' 
' It is the error of sects to value themselves more upon 
their differences than upon their religion.' 

Among the Eoman Catholics themselves, for a con- 
siderable time, scarcely any political life had existed. 
About the middle of the century, it is true, three 
Catholic writers, named O'Connor, Wyse, and Curry, 
made laudable efforts to arouse them ; but their spirits 
were completely cowed by long oppression, and the 
restrictions on edvication had prevented the develop- 
ment of their intellect. At last, however, Father 
O'Leary, a writer of real genius, rose among them. It 
is impossible to read his works without regretting that an 
eloquence of such extraordinary brilliancy was not ex- 
erted more frequently, and on works of greater magni- 
tude. His principal performances are a series of masterly 
letters to Wesley, who had written against the removal 
of the penal laws ; an address to the Eoman Catholics, 
inculcating loyalty during the Eebellion of 1745; and 
a short treatise on the Socinian controversy. In 
England he is scarcely known except by his happy 
retort to a Protestant bishop, to whose picture of the 
horrors of purgatory he replied, ' Your lordship might 
go farther and fare worse ; ' but his name is still 
popular in Ireland, and his writings are well worthy of 
perusal, if it were only for the great beauty of their 
style. He was in his day beyond all comparison the 
most brilliant writer in Ireland ; and had he moved 
in a wider sphere, and written on subjects of more 
enduring value, he might have taken a place among 



RELIEF BILL OF 1793. 135 

the great masters of English prose. He was admitted 
a member of a convivial society called the ' Monks of 
the Screw,' which was presided over by Cm-ran, and 
which included all the first men in the country. It is 
a slight but significant fact, that when on one occasion 
ho went to the Volunteer Convention, the Volunteer 
guard turned out and presented arms to this Catholic 
priest. He attained a position in Ireland which no 
member of his order had held for more than a century ; 
his writings were widely read, and Grattan panegyrised 
him in Parliament. The concluding sentence of that 
panegyric is curiously characteristic of the speaker, 
of his subject, and of the theological temperature of 
their time. ' If I did not know him,' he said, ' to be 
a Christian clergyman, I should suppose him by his 
writings to be a philosopher of the Augustan age.' 

With this exception, the Catholics seem to have 
made scarcely any exertion to improve their condition 
until 1792 and 1793, when they formed a convention, 
under a leader named Keogh, for the purpose of pre- 
paring petitions to the King and to the Parliament. 

Grattan conducted their cause with great tact. He 
refused to make it a party question, and by this refusal 
obtained the assistance of Sir Hercules Langrishe, who 
was one of the ablest of his political opponents, and 
left it always open to the Ministers to adopt his views. 
At last, in 1793, a Eelief Bill, admitting the Koman 
Catholics to the elective franchise, was introduced by 
the Government, and, after a warm debate, was carried. 
In the course of the discussion Grattan made the fol- 
lowinsf statement of the case : * The situation of the 
Eomau Catholics is reducible to four propositions. 
They are three-fourths of your people paying their 
proportion of near 2,000,000^. of taxes, without any 
share in the representation or expenditure ; they pay 



134 HENRY GRATTAN. 

your Church establishment without any retribution ; 
they discharge the active and laborious offices of life, 
manufacture, husbandry, and commerce, without those 
franchises which are annexed to the fruits of industry ; 
and they replenish your armies and navies without 
commission, rank, or reward. Under these circum- 
stances, and under the further recommendation of total 
and entire political separation from any foreign prince 
or pretender, they desire to be admitted to the franchise 
of the constitution.' While supporting the Grovern- 
ment Act, Grattan complained greatly of its imper- 
fection. The admission of the Eoman Catholics to 
Parliament was its necessary complement, and by one 
bold measure the Ministers might have set the ques- 
tion at rest for ever. The measure of 1793 conferred 
political power on the uneducated masses, while it re- 
tained the disqualification of the educated few. Had 
emancipation at this time been conceded, the great 
Catholic landlords, being brought forward prominently 
in the parliamentary arena, would have become the 
natural leaders of their co-religionists, and the Irish 
Catholic landlords have always been as loyal, as mode- 
rate, and as enlightened as the Protestant ones. But 
the penal laws having reduced this class to the smallest 
dimensions, and Tory obstinacy having deprived them 
of the means of acquiring their legitimate political 
influence, it is not surprising that the formation of 
Catholic opinion should have ultimately devolved upon 
agitators and priests. A Bill for completing the relief 
was at this time actually brought forward, but was 
defeated by Government influence. 

The Eelief Bill of '93 naturally suggests a considera- 
tion of the question so often agitated in Ireland, 
whether the Union was really a benefit to the Eoman 
Catholic cause. It has been argued that Catholic 



EFFECT OF THE UNION ON EMANCIPATION. 135 

emancipation was an impossibility as long as the Irish 
Parliament lasted ; for in a country where the great 
majority were Roman Catholics, it would be folly to 
expect the members of the dominant creed to surrender 
a monopoly on which their ascendency depended. The 
arguments against this view are, I believe, overwhelm- 
ing. The injustice of the disqualification was far more 
striking before the Union than after it. In the one 
case the Roman Catholics were excluded from the 
Parliament of a nation of which they were the great 
majority ; in the other they were excluded from the 
Parliament of an empire in which they were a small 
minority. Grrattan, Plunket, Curran, Burrowes, and 
Ponsonby were the great supporters of Catholic eman- 
cipation, and the great opponents of the Union. Clare 
and Duigenan were the two great opponents of eman- 
cipation, and the great supporters of the Union. At a 
time when scarcely any public opinion existed in 
Ireland, when the Roman Catholics were nearly 
quiescent, and when the leaning of Government was 
generally illiberal, the Irish Protestants admitted 
their fellow-subjects to the magistracy, to the jury- 
box, and to the franchise. By this last measure they 
gave them an amount of political power which neces- 
sarily implied complete emancipation. Even if no 
leader of genius had risen in the Roman Catholic 
ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated 
their councils, the influence possessed by a body who 
formed three-fourths of the population, who were 
rapidly rising in wealth, and who could send their re- 
presentatives to Parliament, would have been sufficient 
to ensure their triumph.^ If the Irish Legislature liad 

' This was the opinion expressed by Fox in one of his letters soon 
after the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam : ' As to the Catholic Bill, it is not 
only right in principle, but, after all that was given to the Catholics 



136 HENKT GEATTAN. 

continued, it would have been found impossible to 
resist the demand for reform ; and every reform, by 
diminishing the overgrown power of a few Protestant 
landholders, would have increased that of the Eoman 
Catholics. The concession accorded in 1793 was, in 
fact, far greater and more important than that accorded 
in 1829, and it placed the Eoman Catholics, in a great 
measure, above the mercy of Protestants. But this 
was not all. The sympathies of the Protestants were 
being rapidly enlisted in their behalf. The generation 
to which Charlemont and Flood belonged had passed 
away, and all the leading intellects of the country, 
almost all the Opposition, and several conspicuous 
members of the Government, were warmly in favour 
of emancipation. The rancour which at present exists 
between the members of the two creeds appears then 
to have been almost imknown, and the real obstacle to 
emancipation was not the feelings of the people,^ but 
the policy of the Government. The Bar may be con- 
sidered on most subjects a very fair exponent of the 
educated opinion of the nation ; and Wolfe Tone ob- 
served, in 1792, that it was almost unanimous in favour 
of the Catholics ; and it is not without importance, as 
showing the tendencies of the rising generation, that a 

two years ago, it seems little short of madness (and at such a time as 
this) to dispute about the very little that remains to be given them. To 
suppose it possible that now they are electors they will long submit to 
be ineligible, appears to me to be absurd beyond measure ; but common 
sense seems to be totally lost out of the councils of this devoted country.' 
— Lord Ru^seWs Life of Fox, vol. iii. p. 73. 

* The testimony of Lord Sheffield (who was adverse to the proposi- 
tion of giving votes to the Catholics) to the feelings of the Irish Protes- 
tants is very remarkable. He says, in a work published in 1785: 
' The right of being elected would surely follow their being eligible ; 
but, at all events, the power would be in the electors. It is curious to 
observe one-fifth or perhaps one-sixth of a nation in possession of tho 
power and property of the country, eager to communicate that power to 
the remaining four-fifths, which would in effect entirely transfer it from 
themselves.' — Observations on the Trade of Ireland, p. 372. 



GOVERNMENT OPPOSITION TO EMANCIPATION. 137 

large body of the students of Dublin University in 
1795 presented an address to Grattan, thanking him 
for his labours in the cause. The Eoman Catholics 
were rapidly gaining the public opinion of Ireland, 
when the Union arrayed against them another public 
opinion which was deeply prejudiced against their 
faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence. 
Compare the twenty years before the Union with the 
twenty years that followed it, and the change is suffi- 
ciently manifest. There can scarcely be a question 
that if Lord Fitzwilliam had remained in office the 
Irish Parliament would readily have given emancipa- 
tion. In the United Parliament for many years it was 
obstinately rejected, and if O'Connell had never arisen 
it would probably never have been granted unqualified 
by the veto. In 1828, when the question was brought 
forward in Parliament, 61 out of 93 Irish members, 
45 out of 61 Irish county members, voted in its favour. 
Year after year Grattan and Plunket brought forward 
the case of their fellow-countrymen with an eloquence 
and a perseverance worthy of their great cause ; but 
year after year they were defeated. It was not till the 
great tribune had arisen, till he had moulded his co- 
religionists into one compact and threatening mass, 
and had brought the country to the verge of revolu- 
tion, that the tardy boon was conceded. Eloquence 
and argument proved alike unavailing when unac- 
companied by menace, and Catholic emancipation was 
confessedly granted because to withhold it would be to 
produce a rebellion. 

The refusal of the Government to complete the 
enfranchisement of the Eoman Catholics had a great 
influence in stimulating disloyalty in the country, but 
most especially among the Protestants. The convic- 
tion that the removal of all religious disabilities was 
essential to the welfare and to the security of the 



138 HENRY GRATTAN. 

independence of Ireland, was rapidly gaining ground. 
In 1782, as we have already seen, the representatives 
of 143 corps of Volunteers passed a resolution, with but 
two dissentient voices, expressing their approval of the 
mitigation of the penal code. In 1792 a petition for 
emancipation, signed by 600 Protestant householders 
of Belfast, was presented to the Parliament. In 1791 
the club of United Irishmen had been formed, to advo- 
cate the Catholic claims. This club consisted originally 
chiefly of Protestants, who were under no obligation to 
secrecy, and who were merely pledged ' to promote a 
union of friendship between Irishmen of every religious 
persuasion, and to forward a full, fair, and adequate 
representation of all the people in Parliament.' It 
was presided over by Hamilton Eowan, a Protestant 
gentleman of large fortune, and a most amiable and 
chivalrous character ; and it was at first of a perfectly 
loyal character. Grrattan was not in any way con- 
nected with it ; but, like all the Liberals of the time, 
he was labouring for the attainment of its two great 
objects — Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary 
reform. The latter subject he brought forward, in 
conjunction with Ponsonby, in 1793. He stated in his 
speech that less than ninety individuals returned a 
majority of the Parliament ; but he was unable to pass 
his Bill. There appears indeed to be little question 
that during the later years of the Ministry of Pitt it 
was the firm resolution of the Grovernment not only to 
resist the attempts to purify the Parliament, but also 
steadily and deliberately to increase its corruption. 
Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare, was the chief agent 
in attaining this end. His avowed political maxim 
was that ' the only security for national concurrence 
is a permanent and commanding influence of the 
English Executive, or- rather English Cabinet, in the 
councils of Ireland ; ' and for many years before the 



NKW FORMS OF COKEUPTION. 139 

Union the Grovernment was continually multiplying 
places, in order to increase that influence. Grattan 
described the country as placed ' in a sort of interval 
between the cessation of a system of oppression and 
the formation of a system of corruption ; ' and he 
scarcely exaggerated the proceedings of the Irish rulers 
when he described them as ' a set of men possessing 
themselves of civil, military, and ecclesiastical autho- 
rity, and using it with a fixed and malignant intention 
to corrupt the morals, in order to undermine the 
freedom, of the people.' In 1787 a Peace Preservation 
Bill cancelled the whole magistracy ; and, in addition 
to many other appointments, gave a salaried and 
judicial position to thirty -two barristers. In 1789 no 
less than sixteen peers were created or promoted, and 
the pension list was increased by 13,000^. a year. 
Ponsonby, at this time, declared that there were 110 
placemen in the House of Commons, and that one- 
eighth of the revenue of the country was divided 
between members of Parliament. Five more Treasury 
places were created in 1793. The disfranchisement of 
revenue officers had been carried in England with 
general approval and with excellent effect ; but the 
repeated efforts of Grattan to carry it in Ireland were 
invariably defeated by the Government, and the utmost 
that the patriots could procure was the permanent 
reduction of the pension list to 80,000^. a year, a Bill 
by which those who accepted office were unable to sit 
in Parliament without re-election, and a little more 
direct Parliamentary control over the pension list.^ 

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that 
the many elements of disloyalty and of turbulence 
which smouldered in the country should have acquired 

' I Imrc taken most of these facts from Grattan's Life, by his son, 
which, is probably the best history of Ireland at the period under con- 
sideration. 



140 HENRY GRATTAN. 

new strength. Whoever desires to understand the 
manner in which they were developed should study 
the clear and evidently truthful memoir on the rise 
and aims of the United Irishmen, which was drawn up 
by their three leaders, O'Connor, Emmett, and Mac- 
nevin, when State prisoners.' The society, they tell us, 
was at first simply and frankly loyal, aiming solely at i 
Parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation, and | 
valuing the latter chiefly as a condition or an element ! 
of the former. But, even in 1791, 'it was clearly per- 
ceived that the chief support of the borough influence 
in Ireland was the weight of English influence.' About 
1795 the persistent and successful opposition of the 
Government to reform made the United Irishmen for 
the first time disloyal. ' They began to be convinced 
that it would be as easy to obtain a revolution as a 
reform, so obstinately was the latter resisted ; and, as 
this conviction impressed itself on their minds, they 
were inclined, not to give up the struggle, but to 
extend their views. . . . Still,' they add, ' the whole 
body, we are convinced, would have rejoiced to stop 
short at reform.' They tried to avail themselves of 
French assistance, because ' they perceived that their 
strength was not, and was not likely to become, equal 
to wresting from the English and tlie borough interests 
in L'eland even a reform.' They decided ultimately 
upon making separation rather than reform their ideal, 
because ' foreign assistance could only be hoped for in 
proportion as the object to which it would be applied 
was important to the party giving it. A reform in the 
Irish Parliament was no object to the French ; a sepa- 
ration of Ireland from England was a mighty one 
indeed.' 

In addition to these considerations, we must re- 
member that the moral influence of the French Eevo- 

' ' Castlereagli Correspondence,' vol. i. 



THE UNITED IRISHMEN. 141 

lution had begun to operate upon the country. It is 
difficult for us, among whom the principles it enun- 
ciated are now regarded as mere truisms, to realise 
the transports of enthusiasm and the paroxysms of 
terror with which that revolution was regarded by 
friends and foes. The dramatic grandeur of its cir- 
cumstances ; the expansive character it exhibited ; the 
startling boldness of its doctrines and its aspirations ; 
the eloquence, and heroism, and self-devotion, that 
mingled with and half redeemed its horrors, had all 
tended to awaken an almost delirious enthusiasm in 
Europe. Even in England, though the long-established 
free institutions and the strong aversion to everything 
French miglit have been deemed a sufficient barrier, 
tlie Government thought it necessary to put in motion 
all the long-disused engines of coercion to repress the 
new opinions. But in Ireland, where the ground-swell 
of agitation produced by the movement that had ter- 
minated in 1782 had not yet subsided, where the 
memory of the Volunteers was still fresh in every 
mind, where the traditions of past oppression and the 
spectacle of present abuses were alienating the people 
from England, while an affinity of character and an 
old debt of gratitude were drawing them to France, it 
is not surprising that the Revolution should have 
produced a deep and a lasting effect. As I have said, 
its adherents in Ireland were at first chiefly Protes- 
tants. What little republicanism existed in Ireland was 
mainly among the Presbyterians of Ulster. Wexford 
was the only county where the rebellion was distinc- 
tively Eoman Catholic, and even there Bagenal Harvey, 
its leader, was a Protestant. Grattan and the Govern- 
ment both perceived the coming storm. The latter, in 
1793, brought forward a Bill making those conven- 
tions which had hitherto proved the most powerful 
organs of public opinion illegal. Grattan, Cm-ran, 



142 HENKY GRATTAN. 

and Ponsonby warmly opposed the motion, but with- 
out success ; and that Convention Act, which after- 
wards proved one of the greatest obstacles in O'Connell's 
course, became law. Grattan, on the other hand, urged 
the Grovernment to grant those reforms by which alone 
rebellion could be averted, and the people to abstain 
from that violence which would imperil the existence 
of their constitution. 

Ponsonby's Eeform Bill was brought forward again, 
though without success, in 1794, and Grattan took the 
occasion to give a distinct outline of his policy. He 
desired ' that Ireland should improve her constitution, 
correct its abuses, and assimilate it as much as possible 
to that of Great Britain ; that whenever Administra- 
tions should attempt to act unconstitutionally, but, 
above all, whenever they should tamper with the inde- 
pendence of Parliament, they should be checked by all 
means that the constitution justifies ; but that these 
measures and this general plan should be pursued by 
Ireland with a fixed, steady, and unalterable resolution 
to stand or fall with Great Britain. Whenever Great 
Britain, therefore, should be clearly involved in war, 
Ireland should grant her a decided and unequivocal 
support, except that war should be carried on against 
her own liberty.' 

At last it seemed as though better councils had pre- 
vailed. A large section of the Whigs, in consequence 
of the French Eevolution, had deserted Fox, and had 
united themselves with Pitt, who, in order to ingratiate 
himself with his new allies, consented, after very con- 
siderable hesitation, to recall Lord Westmoreland, and 
to send over Lord Fitzwilliam as Lord-Lieutenant. 
Lord Fitzwilliam was one of the most important per- 
sonages in the Whig party, an intimate friend of 
Grattan, and a warm and avowed supporter of Catholic 



LOKD FITZWILLIAM. 143 

emancipation. Such an appointment at such a moment 
could only bo construed in Ireland in one way. 
Catholic emancipation was the pressing question of the 
hour. Pitt had early expressed himself in its favour. 
At a time when it was known to be in agitation he re- 
called a Viceroy who was opposed to it, and sent over 
one who was known to be its ardent friend. Lord 
Fitzwilliam was directed, indeed, not to bring it for- 
ward ; but he had no instructions to oppose it, and was 
left, as he afterwards declared, a full discretion to 
deal with the question, if brought forward, as might 
seem to him advisable. Pitt himself asked an inter- 
view with Grrattan, and stated to him the intended 
policy of the Government in a remarkable sentence, 
wliich was afterwards published by Grrattan's son, on 
the authority of his father, and which there is no 
reason whatever for thinking inaccurately reported. 
Their intention was 'not to bring forward emanci- 
tion as a Grovernment, but if Grovernment were pressed, 
to yield to it.' 

Under these circumstances it appeared obvious that, 
if the dispositions of the Irish people and Parliament 
were favourable to emancipation, there was no obstacle 
to encounter. Lord Fitzwilliam landed in Ireland in 
December 1794, and was at once received with a most 
significant enthusiasm of loyalty. Petitions in unpre- 
cedented numbers poured in from the Catholics, asking 
for emancipation; and the great majority of the Pro- 
testants were unquestionably strongly in favour of it. 
Lord Fitzwilliam was afterwards able to represent to 
the King ' the universal approbation with which the 
emancipation of the Catholics was received on the part 
of his Protestant subjects;' ' and in his letter to Lord 
Carlisle, after his recall, he described, the state of 

' See bis letter to Grattan in Grattan's Life, by his son. 



1! 



144 HENRY GRATTAN. 

feeling in Ireland in terms whicli need no comnaent. 
It was a time, he wrote, ' when the jealousy and 
alarm which certainly at the first period pervaded the 
minds of the Protestant body exist no longer — when 
not one Protestant corporation, scarcely an individual, 
has come forward to deprecate and oppose the indul- 
gence claimed by the higher order of Catholics — when 
even some of those who were most alarmed in 1793, 
and were then the most violent opposers, declare the 
indulgences now asked to be only the necessary conse- 
quences of those granted at that time, and positively 
essential to secure the well-being of the two countries.' 
Lord Fitzwilliam, in answering the addresses that were 
presented to him, used language which clearly inti- 
mated his sympathy with their cause ; and such lan- 
guage, coming at such a time from the representative 
of the Sovereign, very naturally removed all doubts 
from the minds of the Catliolics. In Parliament the 
almost universal feeling of the country was fully re- 
flected. As on the occasion of Irish emancipation in 
1782, extraordinary supplies were voted in testimony 
of the loyalty of the nation. Grattan, though without 
an official position, became virtually the leader of the 
Government ; and the French party appeared to have 
almost disappeared. Grattan obtained leave to bring 
in an Emancipation Bill, with but three dissentient 
voices ; and that Bill had been drawn up by him in 
concert with Lord Fitzwilliam and the Cabinet. It 
was understood that a Eeform Bill would follow ; and 
one of the most important leaders of the United Irish- 
men afterwards said that in that case their quarrel 
with England would have been at an en J. The whole 
Catholic population were strung to the highest pitch 
of excitement. The Protestants were, for the most 
part, enthusiastically loyal ; and the revolutionary 



RECALL OF LORD FITZWILLIAM. 145 

spirit had almost subsided, when Pitt suddenly and 
pei-emptorily recalled Lord Fitzwilliain, and made tlie 
rebellion which followed inevitable. 

The precise motives of this recall, which plunged 
Ireland into the agonies of civil war and threw back 
the Catholic question for thirty-four years, have been 
a matter of much controversy. Lord Fitzwilliam, in 
going to Ireland, thought it necessary to exercise his 
authority as chief governor by dismissing certain offi- 
cials who were directly opposed to the policy he in- 
tended to pursue ; and among these were two men of 
great influence : Cooke, the Secretary of War — who, a 
few years later, was put forward as the first advocate of 
the Union — and Beresford, a Commissioner of Eevenue, 
who was at the head of one of the most powerful and 
most grasping families in Ireland. These measures 
were mitigated as much as possible ; for Cooke was 
compensated by a pension of 1,200/. a year, and 
Beresford retained the whole of his official revenue ; 
but Beresford, notwithstanding, went immediately to 
London ; and he was supported in his complaints by 
the Chancellor, Lord Fitzgibbon, who was the favourite 
Minister of Pitt, and at the same time the bitterest 
enemy of the Catholics. To this influence the recall 
of Lord Fitzwilliam was ascribed, but though a reason, 
it was probably not the only one. It is scarcely pro- 
bable that the dismissal of a subordinate Minister was 
the sole cause of a measure which plainly threatened 
the gravest and most disastrous consequences to the 
empire. The truth seems to be that Pitt was extremely 
jealous of his Whig colleagues, and afraid of their ob- 
taining a predominant influence in the Cabinet. The 
King had declared his strong opposition to emancipa- 
tion. The Minister would have found some difficulty 
with his Tory friends ; and, although in the situation in 
8 



I 



146 HENRY GRATTAN. 

which he then was it is almost certain that he could 
have carried the measure, he would have weakened 
and divided his party, and given the Whig element 
in his councils a considerable ascendency. He only 
sent over Lord Fitzwilliam with reluctance, and he 
probably hesitated and vacillated about the extent I 
to which he was prepared to go. Personally he jDro- 
fessed extremely liberal views about the Catholics, and 
he must have been quite aware of the danger of refusing 
their demands ; but a careful examination will show that 
at every period of his career he sacrificed or subordinated 
political principles to party ends. But, besides these 
reasons, it is jarobable that he was already looking for- 
ward to the Union. The steady object of his later 
Irish policy was to corrupt and to degrade, in order 
that he ultimately might destroy, the Legislature of 
the country. Had Parliament been made a mirror of 
the national will — had the Catholics been brought 
within the pale of the constitution — his policy would 
have been defeated. Thus it was that a Minister who 
professed himself a warm friend of Catholic emancipa- 
tion did more than any other English statesman to 
adjourn the solution of the question ; that a Minister 
who began his career as the eloquent champion of 
Parliamentary reform resisted steadily every attempt 
to reform the most corrupt borough system in Europe ; 
that a Minister whose political purity has been the 
theme of so many eulogists, was guilty in L-eland of a 
corruption before which the worst acts of Newcastle 
and Walpole dwindle into insignificance. The pro- 
minent part which Fitzgibbon and Cooke took in this 
transaction strengthens the probability that the con- 
templated Union had some influence over the decision 
of Pitt ; and it is at least certain that the recall of 
Lord Fitzwilliam arrested a policy which would have 



RECALL OF LORD FITZWILLIAjr. 147 

made it at that time imj)0ssible. By raising the hopes 
of the Catholics almost to certainty, and then dashing 
them to the ground ; by taking this step at the very 
moment when the inflammatory spirit engendered by 
the Revolution had begun to sjDread among the people ; 
Pitt sowed in Ireland the seeds of discord and blood- 
slicd, of religious animosities, and social disorgani- 
sation, which paralysed the energies of the country 
and rendered possible the success of his machinations. 
The rebellion of 1798, with all the accumulated mi- 
series it entailed, was the direct and predicted conse- 
quence of his policy. Lord Fitzwilliam had solemnly 
warned the Government that to disappoint the hopes of 
the Catholics ' would be to raise a flame in the country 
that nothing but the force of arms could keep down.' 
Lord Charlemont, though on principle opposed to the 
Catholic claims, declared that the recall of Lord Fitz- 
william would be ruinous to Ireland, and foretold that 
by the following Christmas the people might be in the 
hands of the United Irishmen. The feelings of the 
nation were manifested with an intensity that had not 
been displayed since 1782. The shops of Dublin were 
closed ; votes of confidence in the disgraced Lord- 
Lieutenant were passed unanimously by both Houses 
of Parliament, by most of the corporations in the 
kingdom, and by innumerable county meetings. His 
carriage was drawn to the water's edge by an enthu- 
siastic crowd, while a violent riot marked the public 
entry of his successor. The belief in the possibility of 
obtaining reform by constitutional means speedily 
waned. A sullen, menacing disloyalty overspread the 
land, ' creeping,' in the words of Grattan, ' like the 
mist at the heels of the countryman.' 

It was natural, and indeed inevitable, that it should 
be so. A large amount of discontent and agitatioii 



148 IIENIIY GKATTAN. 

had previously existed, and it would have been very- 
strange had it been otherwise. The past history of 
the country was not of a nature to make a contented 
people. The great armed movement of the Volunteers 
was still vivid in the memories of men, and the exclu- 
sion of three-fourths of the nation from the highest 
privileges of the constitution, the profoundly corrupt 
condition of Parliament, and the systematic misappli- 
cation of official patronage, were most legitimate causes 
of discontent. Still the disloyalty was probably less 
than at the present moment, and it might most easily 
have been allayed. Had the Government thought 
fit to adopt the policy of Grattan — had they deter- 
mined ' to combat the wild spirit of democratic liberty 
by the regulated spirit of organised liberty, such as 
may be found in a limited monarchy with a free Par- 
liament,' there can be little doubt that they would 
have succeeded. Tlie landlords, the Parliament, the 
overwhelming majority of the Episcopalian Protestants, 
the Constitutional Liberals who followed Grattan and 
Charlemont, were intensely loyal. The priests in Ire- 
land, as elsewliere, looked with horror upon the Re- 
volution, and upon the doctrines that inspired it. The 
mass of the Catholics were, no doubt, considerably and 
most naturally discontented, but their leaning was 
strongly towards authority, and the contagion of the 
disloyal spirit that was agitating the Presbyterians of 
the north did not seriously affect them till the recall 
of Lord Fitzwilliam. On this point we have the 
evidence of the most competent of witnesses : the three 
leaders of the United Irishmen, whose memoir I have 
before cited. ' Whatever progress this imited system 
had made among the Presbyterians of the north,' they 
say, ' it had, as we apprehend, made but little way 
amongst Catholics throughout the kingdom, until after 



RECALL OF LOlU) FITZWILLIAM. 149 

the recall of Lord Fitzwilliara.' The conduct of the 
people in 1782, and their conduct on the arrival of 
Lord Fitzwilliara, attested sufficiently how easily all 
classes might have been rallied round the throne, and 
though some agitators would always have remained, they 
would have been reduced to impotence, if not to silence, 
by Catholic emancipation and a moderate measure of 
Parliamentary reform. Considering the past history 
of the country, and the inflammatory elements that 
Avere abroad in Europe, L-eland in 1795 was singularly 
easy to govern, had it been governed honestly and by 
honest men. But it was not in human nature that 
the loyalty of the Catholics should survive the ad- 
ministration of Lord Fitzwilliara. Their hopes had 
been raised to the highest point ; the language and 
deraeanour of the representative of the Sovereign had 
been equivalent to a pledge that they would be relieved 
of their disqualifications ; they could point with pride 
to their perfect loyalty for the space of a hundred years, 
in spite of the penal laws, of the rebellions of 1715 and 
of 1745, and of the revolt of the colonies; they had 
won to their cause the iramense majority of their Pro- 
testant fellow-countrymen, and had advanced to the 
very threshold of the constitution, when the English 
Minister interposed to blight their prospects, and exerted 
all the influence of the Government against them. 

It has been suggested, by a distinguished modern 
apologist for Pitt, that it would perhaps have been 
impossible to carry the raeasure through the Irish 
Parliament ; or that, at least, it could only have been 
carried after a prolonged and violent conflict, that 
would have shaken the nation to the centre. The fact 
that the House almost unanimously gave permission 
for the Bill to be brought in does not, it is truly said, 
necessarily imply that it would have passed it in its 



150 HENRY GRATTAN. 



H 



more advanced stages ; and when, soon after, the 
Government opposed the Bill, it was rejected by a 
large majority. The answer to this theory is very 
short. No Irish writer or speaker of the time ques- 
tioned, as far as I am aware, the power of the Grovern- 
ment to carry the Bill. The weight which the Ad- 
ministration possessed through the borough influence 
in the Irish Parliament was almost absolute. In a 
few cases a strong popular feeling was able to defeat 
it, but in no case had the Grovernment any serious 
difficulty when the popular sentiment was on their 
side. That the general . feeling of the people was in 
favour of emancipation is perfectly unquestionable. 
That the Parliament would readily have yielded to 
that feeling is decisively proved by its conduct in 
1793. The Bill carried in that year, which conferred 
the elective franchise on the Catholics, was, as I have 
said, far more important than a Bill 'for allowing 
them to sit in Parliament, for it transferred a far 
larger amount of real political jDOwer, and rendered 
the Parliamentary disqualification utterly untenable. 
The Bill of 1793 was carried without difficulty through 
Parliament, and there is not a shadow of a reason for 
believing that it would have been more difficult to 
carry the Emancipation Bill of 1795. In the emphatic 
words of Lord Fitzwilliam, the disqualifications that 
were retained in the Act of 1793 'gave satisfaction to 
none, and caused discontent to many. The Protestants 
regarded these exceptions with total indifference. The 
Catholics looked on them as signs of suspicion and 
degradation.' ^ There may, perhaps, be some difficulty 
in deciding on whose head the blame of the failure of 
Lord Fitzwilliam's viceroyalty should rest j but it is 
at least very clear that the real obstacle to Catholic 

' Protest in the House of Lords. 



RETIRES FROM PARLIAMENT. 151 

emancipation was not in Ireland, but in England. 
Few facts in Irish history are more certain than that 
the Irish Parliament would have carried emancij^ation 
if Lord Fitzwilliam had remained in power, and that 
the recall of that nobleman was one of the chief causes 
of the rebellion of 1798. Lord Fitzwilliam, on his 
return, demanded in the House of Lords explanations 
of the motive of his recall, and was supported by the 
Duke of Norfolk, but his demand was refused. He 
entered a protest against this refusal, in which he 
stated that he found Catholic emancipation to be 
'ardently desired by the Roman Catholics, to be asked 
for by very many Protestants, and to be cheerfully 
acquiesced in by nearly all,' 

After this event the days of the Irish Parliament 
were but few and evil. Three or four times Grattan 
brought forward the Catholic and the Eeform ques- 
tions, but the Government continually refused to yield, 
and the revolutionary tide surged higher and higher. 
At last, on the eve of the rebellion, he gave up 
his seat in Parliament, and retired into private life. 
He had found it wholly impossible to cope with the 
Government during that period of panic. He could 
not sympathise with the party who were appealing to 
arms, nor yet with those who had driven them to dis- 
loyalty. He was guided, too, in a great measure, by 
the example of Fox, who, when he found his party 
hopelessly reduced, had retired from the debates ; but, 
unlike Fox, he resigned his seat when he abstained 
from parliamentary business. 

If it were not for the wretched condition of the 
country, it would have cost him comparatively little to 
retire from active life ; for he possessed all the re- 
sources of happiness that are furnished by a highly cul- 
tivated intellect, by the most amiable of dispositions, 



152 HENRY GRATTAN. 

and the attachment of innumerable friends. All 
accounts concur in representing liim in private life 
as the simplest and most winning of mortals. The 
transparent purity of his life and character, a most 
fascinating mixture of vehemence and benevolence, a 
certain guilelessness of appearance, and a certain un- 
conscious oddity, both of diction and gesture, gave a 
peculiar charm and pungency to his conversation. 
Like his speeches, it was tesselated with epigram and 
antithesis, full of strokes of a delicate, original, and 
laconic humour, of curiously minute and vivid delinea- 
tions of character, of striking anecdotes, admirably 
though quaintly told. He had seen and observed 
much, and he possessed a rare insight into chai'acter 
and a great originality both of thought and of expres- 
sion. He delighted in music and poetry, and his love 
of nature amounted to a passion, and continued un- 
abated during every portion of his life. In one of the 
letters of Horner there is a charming description of 
the enthusiasm with which, when an old man, he left 
London to visit a county which was famous for its 
nightingales, in order that he might enjoy the luxury 
of their song. There was about him so much greatness 
and so much goodness, that he rarely failed to win the 
love and the veneration of those who came in contact 
with him, but also so much oddity that he usually 
provoked a smile. With much mild dignity of manner 
and great energy of intellect, he combined an almost 
childish simplicity and freshness of character. No 
schoolboy enjoyed with a keener zest a day's holiday in 
the country ; and Curran, who delighted in mimicking 
his singularities, described him conducting a controversy 
about the respective merits of two pumps, with an 
intensity of earnestness and a measured gravity worthy 
of a great political contest. It is a fine saying of 



CURE AN. 153 

Coleridge that in men of genius the matured judgment 
of the man is combined with the delicacy of feeling 
and the susceptibility of impressions of the child, and 
it needs but little acquaintance with literary biography 
to perceive that these last elements almost invariably 
enter into the composition of really great men. It 
is scarcely less true of the temple of genius than of 
tlic temple of Christianity, that he who would enter 
in must become as a little child. 

It does not fall within the province of the present 
work to paint the rebellion of 1798. Public opinion 
had but little scope during a period of military law 
and of mob violence, and the historians of the two 
countries may well let the curtain fall over a scene 
that was equally disgraceful to both. The man who 
at that time occupied the first position in the public 
mind was, beyond all qviestion, Curran. Seldom has 
Ireland produced a patriot of more brilliant and 
varied talents ; and although there were grave defects 
in his private character, his public life was singu- 
larly unblemished, and there are few of his con- 
temporaries who inspire a feeling so much akin to 
affection. Eising from a j)osition of the deepest 
humility, he early attracted public attention as a poet 
of no mean promise — a wit of almost the highest 
order — and an orator who might comjDare with the 
greatest of his countrymen. If his s^jeeches, like 
those oi most lawyers, are somewhat lax and inaccu- 
rate in their style ; if they do not exhibit great depth 
of thought or great force of reasoning, they are charac- 
terised at least by a musical flow that delights even in 
an imperfect and uncorrected report, and by a power 
of pathos, of imagination, and of humour that was 
equalled by none of his contemporaries. A member 
of a profession where all promotion depended on the 



154 HENRY GRATTAN. 

Grovernment, and was then given from political mo- 
tives, he was never guilty of abandoning a principle or 
swerving from a public duty. He exhibited the most 
chivalrous courage in one of the worst periods of 
iudicial intimidation, and the most perfect disin- 
terestedness in one of the worst periods of judicial 
corruption. At the very beginning of his career he 
signalised himself by volunteering to defend an old 
priest who had been maltreated by a Protestant noble- 
man, and whose cause no other member of the Bar was 
willing to adopt. Lord Clare drove him from the 
Court of Chancery by continual evidences of dislike. 
Lord Carleton hinted to him that he might lose his 
silk gown for his defence of the United Irishman 
Neilson. During one of his speeches he was interrupted 
by the clash of the arms of an angry soldiery, and 
more than once he had to dread those political duels 
by which dullness so often revenged itself upon genius. 
In his famous speech for Hamilton Eowan he could 
adopt almost without alteration the exordium of Cicero's 
defence of Milo, but, unlike Cicero, the attempts at 
intimidation that he described only served to stimulate 
his eloquence. And yet this man, before whose sarcasm 
and invective corrupt judges and jDerjured witnesses so 
often trembled ; this man, on whose burning eloquence 
crowded and sometimes hostile courts hung breathless 
with admiration till the shadows of evening had long 
closed in, was in private life the most affable, the 
most gentle, the most unassuming of friends. The 
briefless barrister, the young man making his first 
essays of ambition, the bashful, the needy, and the 
disappointed, ever found in him the easiest of com- 
panions, and acknowledged with delight that his social 
qualities were as fascinating as his eloquence. 

Like his great contemporary ErSkine, he never ob- 



CURRAN. 155 

tained in Pcarliament a position corresponding to that 
which he held at the Bar ; but his Parliamentary career, 
if not very brilliant, was at least eminently consistent 
and disinterested. He made his maiden speech in 
favour of Flood's Eeform Bill, and he took part in 
almost every subsequent effort to purify the Parlia- 
ment, to emancipate the Catholics, to reduce the pen- 
sions, to ameliorate the criminal code, and to prevent 
the introduction of military law. He laboured with 
especial earnestness, though without success, to assimi- 
late the law of treason in Ireland to that of England, 
by which two witnesses were necessary for a capital 
conviction ; and if he had succeeded he would have 
prevented some of the most scandalous scenes that dis- 
graced the subsequent prosecutions. In all the great 
trials of '98 he was the counsel for the prisoners, and 
his eloquence proved fully equal to the occasion. His 
finest effort is his defence of Hamilton Eowan, which 
has been styled by the first of our oratorical critics ' 
the most eloquent speech ever delivered at the Bar, but 
which is said to owe a great deal of its pre-eminence 
to the fact that it was better reported than his other 
speeches. It was on that occasion that he broke into 
his eloquent and well-known justification of the prin- 
ciple of ' universal emancipation,' which had been 
asserted by the United Irishmen, and denounced by 
the Crown officers as treasonable. ' I speak in the 
spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commen- 
surate with and inseparable from the British soil ; 
wliich proclaims even to the stranger and the sojourner, 
the moment he sets his foot on British earth, that the 
ground on which he treads is holy and consecrated by 
the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in 
what language his doom may have been pronounced — 

' Lord Brougham, in his defence of Hunt. 



156 HENEY GEATTAN. 

no matter what complexion, incompatible with freedom, 
an African or an Indian sun may have burnt upon him 
— no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may 
have been cloven down — no matter with what solemni- 
ties he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery 
— the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Bri- 
tain the altar and the god sink together in the dust ; 
his soul walks abroad in its own majesty ; his body 
swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst 
from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, 
and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal 
emancipation.' 

The rebellion of '98 was at last suppressed, and the 
Ministers determined to avail themselves of the oppor- 
tunity to annihilate the Irish Parliament. The notion 
of a Union had been more than once propounded in 
both countries. Cromwell had summoned Irish mem- 
bers to the Parliament in Westminster. Many eminent 
writers had advocated a Union — among others, Sir W. 
Petty, Dean Tiicker, and Adam Smith ; and about the 
time of the Union with Scotland strong efforts were made 
by Irish jsoliticians to effect it. In 1703 there was a 
certain movement in this sense; and in 1709 the Irish 
House of Lords — though apparently without the con- 
currence of the House of Commons — petitioned Lord 
Wharton, the Lord-Lieutenant, to use his good offices to 
procure for Ireland a Union like that between England 
and Scotland,' The reply of the Lord-Lieutenant, how- 
ever, was exceedingly discouraging ; and from this time 
the question seems to have slept till 1759, when a report 
was current that such a measure was contemplated ; 
and so impopular was the project, that the Dublin mob 
seized a number of the members, and made them swear 
that they would vote against it. In 1786 we find 

' See Lord Mountmorres' ' Historical Dissertation on the Irish Par- 
liament,' p. 47. 



PKEPARATIOKS FOIl THE UNIOX. 157 

Charlemont writing- to Flood : ' The English papers 
have lately been infested with the idea of a Union, but 
except from them I know nothing of it ; neither can I 
suppose it possible that such a notion can have entered 
into the heads of our present Administration. When 
we had no constitution the idea was scarcely admis- 
sible ; what, then, must it be now?' Wilberforce, on 
one occasion, observed tliat it would be a good mea- 
sure, but impracticable, for the people would never 
consent. Dr. Johnson said to an Irish gentleman, ' Do 
not unite with us ; we would unite with you only to rob 
you.' The Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Cornwallis, in 
whose published coiTespondence we can trace very 
clearly the progress of the design ; but the jDrincipal 
agent of the Government in corrupting the Legislature 
was the Chief Secretary, Lord Castlereagh. In the 
November of 1798 we find the following curious notice 
of this appointment in one of Lord Cornwallis's letters 
to the Duke of Portland : ' Lord Castlereagh's appoint- 
ment gave me great satisfaction ; and although I admit 
the propriety of the general rule, yet, as lie is so very 
unlike an Irishman, I think he has a great claim to an 
exception in his favour.' In the same month we find 
Lord Castlereagh writing to Mr. Wickham : ' The 
principal provincial newspapers have been secured, and 
every attention will be paid to the 2^i'ess generally.' 
The public were prejDared by a pamphlet in favour of 
a Union written by the Secretary Cooke, which elicited 
a multitude of answers, the ablest being those of Bushe 
and Jebb. Parnell and Fitzgerald, who refused to 
acquiesce in the designs of the Government, were dis- 
missed from ofiice ; and in 1799, after what was con- 
sidered a sufficient distribution of bribes and promises,* 
the measure was introduced. 

' Tlie following notice iu the Cornwallis Lettei's concerning Arch- 
bishop Agar is amusingly characteristic. It is in a letter from Lord 



158 HENRY GRATTAN. 

The period was in many respects very favourable to 
the attempt. In the House of Lords tliere was no 
serious opposition to be apprehended. Peerages in Ire- 
land had long been granted almost exclusively with a 
view to ensure ministerial influence, and Pitt had sur- 
passed all his predecessors in the lavish audacity of his 
creations. The bishops, who were absurdly numerous 
in proportion to their flocks, were, with two exceptions, 
docile and obsequious ; and by ennobling most borough- 
owners who consented to send servile members to the 
House of Commons, the Minister was able, with an 
economy of corruption, to degrade two Houses. On all 
ordinary questions he could secure a majority in the 

Cornwallis to the Duke of Portland, in July 1797: 'It was privately 
intimated to me that the sentiments of the Archbishop of Cashel were 
less unfriendly to the Union than they had been, on which I took an 
opportunity of conversing with his Grace on the subject, and, after dis- 
cussing some preliminary topics respecting the representation of the 
Spiritual Lords, and the probable vacancy of the sec of Dublin, he 
declared his great unwillingness at all times to oppose the measures of 
the Government, and especially on a point in which his Majest3''s feel- 
ings were so much interested, to whom he professed the highest sense 
of gratitude, and concluded by a cordial declaration of friendship).' Dr. 
Agar was made a viscount in 1800, Archbishop of Dublin in 1801, and 
Earl of Normanton a few years later. He tried very hard to obtain the 
Primacy of Ireland, but the Government refiised to relax their rule that 
no Irishman should hold that place. However, Lord Cornwallis writes : 
' His Grace had my promise when we came to an agreement respecting 
the Union that he should have a seat in the House of Lords for life ' 
(' Cornwallis Correspondence,' iii. pp. 160-209). Archbishop Agar was 
also remarkable for the zeal with which he advocated sanguinary mea- 
sures of repression during the rebellion of 1798 (Grattan's Life, vol. iv. 
p. 390) ; for the large fortune which he made by letting the Church lands 
on terms beneficial to his own family (' Castlereagh Correspondence,' 
vol. ii. p. 71) ; and for having allowed the fine old church at Cashel to fall 
into ruins, and built in its place a cathedral in the worst modern taste, 
which he ordered to be represented on his tomb (Stanley's ' Westminster 
Abbey,' p. 324). There is an extremely eulogistic inscription to his 
memory in Westminster Abbey, and a fine bas-relief representing the 
angels bearing tlie mitre to the saintly prelate. 



AKGUMENTS FOR A UNION, 159 

Lower House, and he had been for many years increas- 
ing the number of placemen. In quiet times a storm 
of popular indignation would have made a Union im- 
possible, but at the time when the measure was brought 
forward the country was prostrate and paralysed after 
the great rebellion. Eesistance was impossible, and 
there was much to j)redispose men to a Union. The 
civil war which the policy of Pitt had produced dege- 
nerated in Wexford, and in part of the south, into a 
merciless struggle of races and creeds, disgraced on 
both sides by the most atrocious cruelties. The Pro- 
testants passed into that condition of terrified ferocity 
to which ruling races are always liable when they find 
themselves a small minority in the midst of a fierce 
rebellion. ' The minds of the people,' wrote Lord 
Cornwallis, after the suppression of the revolt, 'are 
now in such a state that nothing but blood will satisfy 
them.' ' Even at my table, where you will suppose I 
do all I can to prevent it, the conversation always 
turns on hanging, shooting, burning, and so forth ; and 
if a priest has been put to death the greatest joy is 
expressed by the whole company.' The Catholics were 
equally sanguinary. A prominent rebel, who was exe- 
cuted on Vinegar Hill, and whose confession is pre- 
served in the ' Castlereagh Correspondence,' gives a 
graphic account of their proceedings : ' Every man that 
was a Protestant was called an Orangeman ; and every 
one was to be killed, from the poorest man in the 
country. Before the rebellioii I never heard there was 
any hatred between Catholics and Protestants ; they 
always lived peaceably together. I always found the 
Protestants better masters and more indulgent land- 
lords than my own religion. During the rebellion 
I never saw any one interfere to prevent murder but 
one Byrne, who saved a man.' 



160 HENRY GRATTAN. 

Under these circumstances it would not have been 
surprising if the Protestants, terrified at the fierce ele- 
ments that were surging- around them, should have 
welcomed any political combination that, by identify- 
ing them more completely with a powerful Protestant 
nation, might increase their strength ; or if the Catho- 
lics should have accepted with equal delight a measure 
that withdrew them from the immediate tyranny of 
their enraged fellow-countrymen. But beside these 
considerations, political inducements of a more special 
kind were persistently and adroitly employed. One of 
the strongest wishes of the Irish Catholics was natu- 
rally to be freed from their political disqualifications. 
One of the most serious objections in the eyes of the 
Irish Protestants to Catholic emancipation was that it 
might prove fatal to the permanence and security of 
the Established Church in Ireland. The Ministers and 
the ministerial writers argued that a Union would lead 
to the immediate consummation of the wishes of the 
Catholics, and that it would at the same time place 
the Establishment beyond all possibility of danger. 
Catholic emancipation, as we have already seen, had 
been looked upon very favourably by the Irish Protes- 
tants ; but Pitt having suffered Lord Fitzwilliam to 
amuse the Irish people by the prospect, had blighted 
their hopes by recalling him, and thus produced the 
rebellion. Irish opinion had greatly deteriorated luider 
the influence of the events that followed, and sectarian 
animosity was much stronger in 1799 than in 1795 ; 
but still the passing of the measure depended upon 
the attitude of the Government. With their assistance 
it was easy. In the face of their opposition, and with 
an unreformed Parliament, it was impossible. Being 
thus the practical arbiters of the question, they deter- 
mined to employ it as a means of compelling the 



NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE CyVTIIOLICS. 161 

Catholics to support the Union. Pitt himself — whose 
political speculations were almost always large and 
liberal — wished to give Catholic emancipation with the 
Union, and would certainly have done so if he could 
have accomplished the object without in any degree 
diminishing or endangering his political ascendency. 
His great aim, however, was not to emancipate the 
Catholics, but to make them believe that he was going 
to do so, and thus to bribe them to support the 
Union. The enterprise was a difficult one, for Lord 
Clare and some of the other chief advocates of the 
Union were very hostile to the Catholics ; and the 
Minister desired to enlist in his support all the anti- 
Catholic elements in the country. The plan, therefore, 
of coupling the Union with favours to the Catholics 
was abandoned ; although Pitt wrote to Lord Cornwallis 
in November 1798, that Mr. Elliot — who was one of 
his chief authorities on Irish matters — thought that a 
Union, accompanied by Catholic emancipation, ought 
to be, and might easily be, accomplislied ; and although 
Pitt himself noticed at the same time that all the Irish 
he had seen were in favour of ' a provision for the 
Catholic clergy, and of some arrangement respecting 
tithes.' ' Another course of proceeding was resolved 
upon. The leading Catholics were to be privately 
assured that though Government would oppose eman- 
cipation as long as the Irish Parliament existed, they 
desired to carry it if the Union was effected. In 
the autumn of 1799 CornAvallis directed Castlereagh 
to inform the English Government that the Union 
could not be carried if the Catholics were in active 
opposition, and that their attitude on tlie question 
depended mainly upon their hopes of emancipation. 
He added that friends of the Government liad already 
Stanhope's ' Life of Pitt,' vol. iii. p. 161. 



162 HENRY GP.ATTAN. 

produced a favourable impression by exciting those 
hopes, and he desired to know howfar he might pursue 
that course. A Cabinet having been hastily summoned, 
Castlereagh informed him, as the result, that the Minis- 
ters who composed it were unanimously in favour of the 
principle of emancipation ; that they apprehended con- 
siderable repugnance to the measure in many quarters, 
and particularly in the' highest ; that they declined 
to give an express promise, partly because it would 
embarrass them in their negotiations with the Pro- 
testants, and partly because it was not right that such 
claims should be made a matter of mere bargain ; but 
that, as far as the sentiments of the Cabinet were 
concerned, the Lord-Lieutenant was fully authorised to 
solicit the Catholic support.' This pretended unani- 
mity, in fact, did not exist, for when the question 
was formally brought forward in the Cabinet in 1801, 
it appeared that no less than five of its members were 
opposed to emancipation ; ^ but of this the Catholic 
leaders could know nothing. They were probably 
aware that the King was hostile to emancipation, but 
they could not know that both in 1795 and 1798 he 
had distinctly declared that his objections to it were in- 
superable,^ and that the overtures made to them were 
made with a perfect knowledge of his sentiments, with- 
out any attempt to learn how far they might be modi- 
fied,^ or any determination to exert the full ministerial 

' ' Coruwallis Papers,' vol. iii. p. 326. 

2 Staiiliope's ' Life of Pitt,' vol. iii. p. 273. 

' Seo the very remarkable paper drawn up by the King in 179o, in 
Campbell's 'Lives of the Chancellors,' vol. viii. pp. 173-175; and his 
letter to Pitt in 1798, in Stanhope's ' Life of Pitt,' iii. Append, xvi. 

* It is charitable to suppose that Pitt really hoped to carry emancipa- 
tion by forcing the hand of the King after the Union was carried. 
Mr. Adolphus, who had much private information of the proceedings at 
court, says : ' The assurance M-as given to the Irish Catholics without 



THE CirUECII ESTABLISHMENT. 163 

power in their favour. Tbey only knew that the chief 
Irish representatives of one of the strongest govern- 
ments that ever existed in England represented the 
Cabinet as unanimously in favour of emancipation, 
and on that ground solicited their support. Grovern- 
ment influence alone had defeated emancipation in 
1795. They were told that the Government objection 
to it would be obviated by a Union, and they inferred 
that by carrying the Union they were carrying their 
cause. The great object was to hold out hopes suf- 
ficient to secure Catholic support or neutrality without 
committing the Grovernment to a distinct pledge ; and 
this end was most dexterously accomplished. A few 
sentences written by Lord Castlereagh in 1799 explain 
the calculation that was made. ' The Catholics,' he says, 
' if offered equality without a Union, will probably prefer 
it to equality with a Union ; for in the latter case they 
must ever be content with inferiority, in the former 
tliey would probably by degrees gain ascendency. . . . 
Were the Catholic question to be now carried, the great 
argument for a Union would be lost, at least as far as 
the Catholics are concerned ; it seems, therefore, more 
important than ever for Grovernment to resist its adop- 
tion, on the ground that without a Union it must be 
destructive ; with it, that it may be safe.' ' 

While this powerful inducement was offered to the 
Catholics, another and almost equally strong one was 
offered to the Protestants. Both Flood and Charle- 
mont, as I have already stated, had objected to Catholic 
emancipation on the ground that it would lead to the 

iho King's privity, and with a full knowledge of his sentiments upon the 
subject, in the hope that his Majcstj-, after the Union had taken place, 
seeing that Catholic emancipation was indispensable, would agree, how- 
ever reluctantly, to that measure.' — History of England, vol. vi. 

' ' Castlereagh Correspondence,' vol. ii. p. 140. There are other pas* 
sages to the same effect in the CoiTcspondencc, 



164 IIEXRY GRATTAN. 



1 



disestablishment and disendowment of the Established 
Church, and the advocates of Catholic emancipation 
had always rejected the prophecy with indignation. 
By th^ Union it was maintained that the Church would 
be placed in absolute security, and this security was 
one of the special grounds upon which the Protestants 
were urged to support it. It was of two kinds. The 
Act of Union was looked upon as a treaty by which 
the Irish Parliament consented on certain conditions 
to surrender its separate existence, and one article of 
that Act, inserted by the desire of Archbishop Agar, 
stipulated for the preservation of the Establishment as 
' an essential and fundamental part of the Union.' 
Besides this, the Church being placed under the pro- 
tection of a Legislature which was likely at all times 
to remain mainly Protestant, it was imagined that no 
serious danger could menace it. The stress laid upon 
these considerations by the Grovernment advocates of 
the Union w^as very great. 'With the Union,' wrote 
the Secretary Cooke, ' Ireland would be in a natural 
situation ; for, all the Protestants of the empire being 
united, she would have the proportion of fourteen to 
three in favour of her Establishment, whereas at present 
there is a proportion of three to one against it.' ' So 
long as the separation shall continue,' said Castlereagh, 
' the Church of Ireland will ever be liable to be im- 
peached upon local , grounds. Nor will it be able to 
maintain itself effectually against the argument of 
physical force. But when once completely incorpo- 
rated with the Chui'ch of England, it will be placed 
upon such a strong and natural foundation as to be 
above all apprehensions and alarms.' 

It is a curious enquiry how far public opinion was 
influenced by these considerations. The last which I 
have mentioned appear? to have had extremely little 



ATTITUDE OV TROIESTANTS AND CATHOLICS. 165 

effect. Clare, Duigenan, and the bishops, it is true, 
were ardent advocates of the Union, but it appears 
tolerably certain that no considerable section of Pro- 
testants of any class outside Parliament concurred in 
their view. The Orangemen were decidedly hostile, 
and the utmost that could be obtained of them was 
that they would not act in their corporate capacity in 
opposition to it. The Established Church has played an 
important part in the history of the Union, but it was 
at a much later period. The conviction that repeal 
would be followed by disestablishment was one of the 
reasons that arrayed the great majority of the Protes- 
tants in hostility to O'Connell, and the connection 
between the two measures was clearly recognised. 
When Lord John Eussell in 1835 was endeavouring to 
apply a very small part of the Irish Church revenues 
to secular purposes, Mr. Gladstone, in a speech of con- 
summate eloquence, denounced the policy of the Whig 
leader, and predicted the consequences that might 
flow from it. ' The noble Lord invited them to invade 
the property of the Church in Ireland. He (Mr. Glad- 
stone) considered that they had abundant reasons for 
maintaining that Church, and if it should be removed 
he believed that they would not be long able to resist 
the repeal of the Union.' ' 

With reference to the Catholics, however, the case 
is somewhat different. Those of Dublin, indeed, took 
an active and emphatic part against the Union, and 
the great majority of them throughout the country 
were probably either hostile or indifferent to it.^ There 
was, however, unquestionably a real and considerable 

• Hansard, ord ser. vol. xxvii. p. 513. 

^ See the complaint of Lord Cornwallis (Jan. 31, 1800), that the 
Catholics were 'joining tho standard of opposition.' — Comwallis Corre- 
spondence. 



166 IIENKY GRATTAN. 

Catholic party in its favour, guided with remarkable 
skill and energy by Troy, the Archbisliop of Dublin, com- 
prising, among other prelates, the Archbishops of Tuam 
and of Cashel,^ and favoured by an important section 
of the Catholic aristocracy. Corry, the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, the most violent opponent of Grattan 
in the Union debates, won his seat at Newry throiigh 
the unanimous support of the Catholic voters.^ Con- 
sidered in the light of subsequent history, it is a 
curious fact that tlie Union was least unpopular in the 
Province of Munster and in the towns of Cork and 
Sligo, and that some of the Catholic priests were 
among the most active agents in procuring signatures 
to addresses in its favour.^ 

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the whole un- 
bribed intellect of Ireland was opposed to it. Almost 
the only man of considerable talent in the Ministerial 
ranks was Fitzgibbon, who held the office of Lord Chan- 
cellor, and had obtained the Earldom of Clare. He was a 
ready and powerful debater, and a man of great per- 
sonal courage and force of character, but he never ap- 
pears to have been suspected even by his friends of any 
patriotic feelings, his intellect was narrow and in- 
tolerant, and his temper ungovernably violent. He had 
been at one time considered a Liberal, and owed his 
promotion in a great degree to Grattan, whom he 
afterwards attacked with the utmost virulence. Like 
many Irishmen of a later time, he had the habit of 
constantly depreciating and vilifying his country — ' our 
damnable country,' as he described it in a letter to 
Lord Castlereagh — and he was a bitter enemy of the 
Catholics. He was remarkable for an arrogance of 

' See the ' Castlereagh Correspondence,' vol. ii. pp. 344-348. 

2 Ibid. p. 168. 

' Ibid. pp. 26, 328, 348, 349, 400, 



FITZGIBBON. 167 

tone, which in debate is said sometimes to have almost 
verged upon insanity, and for the reckless manner in 
which he displayed his personal antipathies upon the 
Bench ; and he scandalised the Irish Parliament by the 
perfect frankness with which he justified a- policy of 
corruption, and the English House of Lords by his 
apology for the use of torture against the rebels of 
1798. Probably no Irishman of his generation was so 
hated, and when he died the popular delight broke 
out (as it afterwards did in England at the death of 
Castlereagh) in a kind of hideous carnival around his 
coffin. • He was, however, quite capable of generous 
actions, and showed on one or two occasions real 
humanity towards State prisoners in 1798 ; and his rare 
skill in stating a case, and his indomitable courage in 
meeting opposition, made him extremely useful to the 
Ministry. For many years he was almost absolute in 
the House of Lords, and after Lord Castlereagh he con- 
tributed most to passing the Union. It is, however, 
curiously illustrative of the tortuous skill with which 
the Administration of Pitt was conducted, that Clare, 
when apparently the very leader of the Ministerial 
party, was kept in complete ignorance of the secret 
overtures that were made to the Catholic prelates, 
and of the intentions of the Minister to make the 
Union the prelude to emancipation.^ 

The Irish Bar was at this time peculiarly rich in 

' Lord Ilolland says: 'Lord Hobart afterwards assured me that 
lioth ho and Lord Clare had been deceived by Mr. Pitt, and that he 
would have voted against the Union had he suspected at the time that 
it was connected with any project of extending the concessions already 
made to the Irish Catholics. The present Lord Clare's report of his 
fiither's views of -the whole matter tallies with this account of the 
transaction.' — Memoirs of the Whig Tarty, vol. i. p. 162. See, too, on 
the indignation of Lord Clare at what he called the ' deception ' that was 
practised on him, the ' Castlereagh Correspondence,' vol. iv. pp. 47, 50. 



II 



168 IIENRY GRATTAX. 

talent, and one of the first objects of the Grovernment 
was to corrupt it. To a certain extent the lawyers had 
undoubtedly a professional interest in keeping the 
Parliament in Dublin, but, on the other hand, all pro-, 
motions were in the hands of the Government, and! 
every power which the Grovernment possessed was 
unscrupulously strained. It was certain, beyond all 
reasonable doubt, that the overwhelming majority of ■ 
the people of Ireland were opposed to the destruction 
of their national Parliament, but it was necessary to 
create some semblance of popular opinion on the other 
side, and accordingly Castlereagh began his campaign 
by drawing 5,000/. from the secret service fund, 
and expended the greater part of it in bribing young 
lawyers to write pamphlets in favour of a Union. The 
vehement part which the Chancellor took in advocating 
the Union had naturally an influence upon the Bar. 
All officials who held any office under Grovernment 
were rigorously expelled if they would not support it, 
while, on the other hand, crowds of Tmprincipled and 
incompetent men were promoted to high legal honours 
for defending it. The immobility of the judges having 
been conceded shortly after the emancipation of Par- 
liament, and the penal laws having been for the most 
part abrogated, there was every reason to believe that 
by a just and upright policy the antipathy to law which 
had become so deeply ingrained in the Irish character 
might have been gradually removed. The judicial pro- 
motions that followed the Union directly and powerfully 
strengthened it. Lawless men are not likely to learn 
to reverence the law when it is administered by officials 
whose positions are notoriously the reward of their 
political profligacy. 

The conduct of the Irish lawyers at this time was on 
the whole eminently noble. In spite of the lavish 



DENUNCIATIONS OF THE LNION. 169 

corruption of the Mini>sters, the great body remained 
firm to the anti-Ministerial side, and both in public 
meetiugs and in Parliament they were the most ardent 
opponents of the Union. Nor does there appear in 
this respect to have been any considerable difference 
between Whigs and Tories, or between Protestants and 
Catholics. When the measure was first propounded 
a great meeting was held under the presidency of 
Saurin, one of the ablest of the Tory lawyers, and was 
attended by all the leading lawyers of all sides, and 
at this meeting a resolution condemning the proposed 
Union was carried by 166 to 32. At the end of 1803 
there were only five members of the minority who had 
not received appointments from Government. In Par- 
liament the speeches of Plunket and of some of his 
leg-al colleagues were masterpieces of powerful reason- 
ing, and should be studied by all who desire to know 
the light in which the measure appeared to some of 
the most disciplined intellects in the commimity. It 
would, indeed, be scarcely possible to find in the whole 
compass of Parliamentary eloquence speeches breathing 
a more intense bitterness. ' I will make bold to say,' 
said Plunket, ' that licentious and impious France, in 
all the unrestrained excess which anarchy and atheism 
have given bix'th to, has not committed a more insi- 
dious act against her enemy than is now attempted by 
the professed champion of the cause of civilised Europe 
against her friend and ally in the time of her calamity 
and distress — at the moment when our country is filled 
with British troops — when the loyal men of Ireland 
are fatigued and exhausted by their efforts to subdue 
the Eebellion — efforts in which they had succeeded 
before those troops arrived — whilst the Habeas Corpus 
Act is suspended — whilst trials by court-martial are 
carrying on in many parts of the kingdom — whilst the 
9 



170 nENRT GRATTAN. 

people are taught to think they have no right to meet 
or deliberate, and whilst the great body of them are 
so palsied by their fears or worn down by their ex- 
ertions that even this vital question is scarcely able 
to rouse them from their lethargy — at a moment when 
we are distracted by domestic dissensions — dissensions 
artfully kept alive as the pretext of oiu- present sub- 
jugation and the instrument of our future thraldom.' 
' For centuries,' said Bushe, ' the British Parliament 
and nation kept j^ou down, shackled your commerce 
and paralysed your exertions, despised your characters 
and ridiculed your pretensions to any privileges, com- 
mercial or constitutional. She has never conceded a 
point to you which she could avoid, nor granted a 
favour which was not reluctantly distilled. They have 
been all wrung from her like drops of blood, and you 
are not in possession of a single blessing (except those 
which you derived from God) that has not been either 
purchased or extorted by the virtue of your own Par- 
liament from the illiberality of England.' The lan- 
guage of Saurin was still stronger. ' If a legislative 
Union,' he said, ' should be so forced upon this country 
against the will of its inhabitants it would be a nullity, 
and resistance to it would be a struggle against usurp- 
ation, and not a resistance against law. You may 
make it binding as a law, but you cannot make it 
obligatory on conscience. It will be obeyed as long as 
England is strong, but resistance to it will be in the 
abstract a duty, and the exhibition of that resistance 
will be a mere question of prudence.' ' When I take 
into account,' said Burrowes, ' the hostile feelings gene- 
rated by this foul attempt, by bribery, by treason, and 
by force, to plunder a nation of its liberties in the hour 
of its distress, I do not hesitate to pronounce that 
every sentiment of affection for Great Britain will 



MEASURES OF REFORM. 171 

perish if this measure pass, and that, instead of uniting 
the nations, it will be the commencement of an era of 
inextinguishable animosity.' 

The combined exertions of almost all the men of 
talent and of almost all the men of pure patriotism 
in the Parliament were successful in 1799. The 
Government Bill was defeated by 109 to 104, and the 
illumination of Dublin attested the feeling of the 
people. The national party did all that was in their 
power to secure their triumph, for they foresaw clearly 
that the struggle would be renewed. Ponsonby brought 
forward a resolution pledging the House to resist every 
future measure involving tlie principle it had con- 
demned, but he was compelled eventually to withdraw 
it. Mr. Dobbs, a lawyer of some talents and the purest 
patriotism, but whose influence was impaired by an 
extraordinary monomania on the subject of prophecy,* 
brought forward a series of measures for the purpose 
of tranquillisirg the country, comprising Reform, Catho- 
lic Emancipation, and the payment of the priests ; but 
the Grovernment was again successful, and the shadow 
of the coming year fell darkly on every patriotic mind. 

These gloomy forebodings were soon verified. After a 
series of measures of corruption which I shall presently 

' Ho bolieved that Armagh is Armageddon. The Ii-ish, it appears, 
of Armagh is Armaceaddon ; c and g are intercliangeable letters, and 
thus, by contraction, we should have Armageddon. Armaceaddon 
means the hill of the prophet ; and some ' eminent Hebrew scholar ' 
considered that Armageddon meant much the same. Mr. Dobbs also 
considered that the ' white linen ' in the Apocalypse alluded to the linen 
trade in Ireland, the sea of glass to its insular position, the harps borne 
by the angels to its national arms, and that the Giant's Causeway 
was the Stone of Daniel. He wrote two books, ' A Short View of 
Prophecy ' and ' A Universal History,' both in letters to his son. Un- 
like most persons who indulge in these eccentric opinions, he was as 
liberal as he was patriotic, and was selected by Grattan to carry the 
resolutions in favour of the repeal of the penal laws to the Volunteers 
at Dungannon. 



172 HENKY G15ATTAN. 

describe, the Union was again introduced, and this 
time with success. Grattan was suffering from a severe 
illness. His strength was completely prostrated, and 
he was not in a fit condition for the most moderate 
exertion, far less for a great political contest. In 
his country's extremity, however, it was not fitting 
that he should be absent from her councils, and he 
accordingly procured his election for Wicklow, and 
entered the House during the debate. He wore the 
imiform of the Volunteers. He was so feeble that lie 
could only walk with the assistance of two friends, and 
his head hung drooping upon his chest, but an un- 
wonted fire sparkled in his eye, and the flush of deep 
emotion mantled his cheek. There was a moment's 
pause, an electric thrill passed through the House, and 
then a long wild cheer burst from the galleries. Shortly 
afterwards he rose to speak, but his strength failed 
him, and he obtained leave to address the House sitting. 
Then was witnessed that spectacle, among the grandest 
in the whole range of mental phenomena, of mind 
asserting its supremacy over matter — of the power of 
enthusiasm and the power of genius nerving a feeble 
and an emaciated frame. As the fire of oratory kindled 
— as the angel of enthusiasm touched those pallid lips 
with the living coal — as the old scenes crowded on the 
speaker's mind, and the old plaudits broke upon his 
ear, it seemed as though the force of disease was neu- 
tralised, and the buoyancy of youth restored. His voice 
gained a deeper power, his action a more commanding 
energy, his eloquence an ever-increasing brilliancy. 
For more than two hours he poured forth a stream of 
epigram, of argument, and of appeal. He traversed 
almost the whole of that complex question — he grappled 
with the various arguments of expediency the Ministers 
had urged ; but he placed the issue on the highest of 



THE UNION. 173 

grounds. ' The thing he proposes to buy is what can- 
not be sold — liberty.' When he at last concluded, it 
must have been felt by all his friends that if the Irish 
Parliament could have been saved by eloquence it 
would have been saved by him. He had been for some 
time vehemently denounced in Parliament, and Corry 
now attempted to crush him by a violent attack. 
Grattan, however, treated his adversary with contemp- 
tuous silence till the assault had been three times 
repeated, when he terminated the contest by a very 
brief but most crushing invective, and a duel, in which 
Corry was wounded, was the result. 

It was soon evident, however, that no eloquence and 
no arguments could save the constitution of Ireland. 
In division after division Grrattan was defeated, and he 
saw with an ineffable anguish the edifice which he had 
done so much to construct sinking into inevitable dis- 
solution. Night after night the contest was vainly 
prolonged with a feverish and impassioned earnestness. 
Yet, even at that period, hope was not quite ex- 
tinguished in his party. They saw that a Union 
was inevitable, but some, at least, looked beyond it. 
' I know,' said Goold, ' that the Ministers must suc- 
ceed ; yet I will not go away with an aching heart, 
because I know that the liberties of the people must 
ultimately triumph. The people must at present 
submit, because they cannot resist 120,000 armed 
men ; but the period will occur when, as in 1782, 
England may be weak, and Ireland sufficiently strong 
to recover her lost liberties.' Nor were the last words 
of Grattan devoid of hope : ' The constitution,' he 
exclaimed, ' may for a time be lost, but the character 
of the people cannot be lost. The Ministers of the 
Crown may perhaps at length find out that it is not so 
easy to put down for ever an ancient and respectable 



174 HENRT GBATTAN. 

nation by abilities, however great, or by corruption, 
however irresistible. Liberty may repair her golden 
beams, and with redoubled heat animate the country. 
The cry of loyalty will not long continue against the 
principles of liberty. Loyalty is a noble, a judicious, 
and a capacious principle, but in these countries 
loyalty distinct from liberty is corruption, not loyalty. 
The cry of the connection will not in the end avail 
against the principles of liberty. Connection is a wise 
and a profound policy, but connection without an Irish 
Parliament is connection without its own principle, 
without analogy of condition, without the pride of 
honour that should attend it — is innovation, is peril, 
is subjugation — not connection. . . . Identification is 
a solid and imperial maxim, necessary for the preserva- 
tion of freedom, necessary for that of empire ; but 
without union of hearts, with a separate Government 
and without a separate Parliament, identification is 
extinction, is dishonour, is conquest — not identifica- 
tion. Yet I do not give up my country. I see her in 
a swoon, but she is not dead. Though in her tomb 
she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her 
lips a spirit of life, and on her cheek a glow of beauty : 

Thou art not conquered : beauty's ensign yet 
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, 
And death's pale flag is not advanced there. 

While a plank of the vessel stands together, I will not 
leave her. Let the courtier present his flimsy sail, 
and carry the light bark of his faith with every new 
breath of wind ; I will remain anchored here with 
fidelity to the fortunes of my coimtry, faithful to her 
freedom, faithful to her fall.' These were the last 
words of Grrattan in the Irish Parliament. 

In England, Sheridan resisted the measure at every 
step of its progress with persevering earnestness. He 



THE UNION. 175 

moved that its consideration should be delayed till the 
sentiments of the people of Ireland had been ascer- 
tained, but his motion was defeated by 30 to 206. ' I 
Avould have fought for that Irish Parliament,' he after- 
wards exclaimed to Grattan — ' ay, up to the knees in 
blood ! ' Among the speakers on the measure in the 
House of Lords was Lord Byron, who described it as 
the ' union of the shark with its prey.' All opposition, 
however, was fruitless, and the Bill received the royal 
assent on August 1. 

It has been argued, with much force, and in perfect 
accordance with the doctrines of the great political 
writers of the seventeenth century, that the Irish 
Parliament was constitutionally incompetent to pass 
the Union. It was the trustee, not the possessor, of 
the legislative power. It was appointed to legislate, 
not to transfer legislation — to serve the people for 
eight years, not to hand over the people to another 
Legislature. The Act was in principle the same as if 
the Sovereign of England were to transfer her autho- 
rity to the sovereign of another nation. It transcended 
the capacities of Parliament, and was therefore consti- 
tutionally a usurpation. ' The Legislature,' in the words 
of Locke, ' neither must nor can transfer the power of 
making laws to anybody else, or place it anywhere but 
where the people have.' 

The only qualiiication which is to be made to this 
doctrine is a very obvious one. Parliament is the 
trustee of the nation, but the nation may enlarge its 
powers, and give it the right to destroy itself. The 
essential condition of the constitutional validity of 
an act by which the national representatives destroy 
the national representation is that the policy of that 
act should have been submitted to the decision of 
the constituents. In our own day, no considerable 



176 HENRY G RATTAN. 

innovation in politics, no material modification in the 
representative system, could be effected without such 
an appeal, and it is one of the most important func- 
tions of a well-organised House of Lords that it 
delays contemplated changes until it has been made. 
But the Union, which swept away a Parliament that 
had existed for centuries, and had recently been eman- 
cipated by the enthusiasm of the entire nation, was 
carried without a dissolution, without any reference to 
the voice of the people. It is a memorable fact, indi- 
cating the power of the Tory reaction which followed 
tlie French Eevolution, that when Irish Liberals and 
English Whig statesmen urged that a question of this 
kind ought to be brought before the nation by a disso- 
lution, their doctrine was again and again denounced 
by Pitt as the most palpable and most flagrant 
Jacobinism. The Government not only showed no 
desire to consult the wishes of the people, but it even 
strenuously laboured to separate the representatives 
from their influence. ' It seems,' wrote the Duke of 
Portland to Lord Castlereagh in 1799, 'as if the cry of 
Dublin had can-ied away many gentlemen whose 
interests in all respects must be benefited by a 
Union ; and I have seen with some surprise, as well 
as with real concern, a deference expressed for the 
opinion of constituents which I conceive to have been 
as unnecessary as it is entirely unconstitutional.' ' 
' The clamour out of doors,' wrote Lord Cornwallis in 
the same year, ' is chiefly to be apprehended as fur- 
nishing the members within with a plausible pretext 
for acting in conformity to their own private feelings.' ^ 
If the people, however, were not to influence their 
representatives, there was another kind of influence 

' ' Castlereagh Correspondence,' toI. ii. p. 146. 
* 'Cornwallis Correspondence,' Jan. 1799. 



THE UNION. 177 

about which no scruples were entertained. It is, I 
believe, a simple and unexaggerated statement of the 
truth, that in the entire history of representative 
government there is no instance of corruption having 
been applied on so large a scale, and with so audacious 
an effrontery, as by the Ministers in Ireland. The 
trustees of the patronage of the nation, their one 
object was, by the abuse of their trust, to bribe the 
representatives to sacrifice their constituents. The 
constitution of Parliament, in which more than one- 
third of the seats were nomination boroughs, and a 
large proportion of these boroughs in four or five 
hands, gave them fatal facilities, and a long course of 
adverse influences had made the political classes in 
Ireland profoundly corrupt. Lord Cornwallis, the 
Lord-Lieutenant — a brave, frank, and humane soldier, 
who was sincerely anxious to benefit the empire, and 
who retained his honourable instincts while discharging 
a most dishonourable office — felt acutely the task tliat 
was confided to him, and in one of his letters applied 
to himself with remarkable candour the lines of Swift : 

From hell a viceroy devil ascends, 
His budget with corruption crammed, 
The contributions of the damned, 
Which with unsparing hand he strows 
Through courts and Senate as he goes. 

' The political jobbery of this country,' he writes, 
' gets the better of me. ... I trust that I shall live 
to get out of this most cursed of all situations, and 
most repugnant to my feelings. How I long to kick 
those whom my public duty obliges me to court I ' 
' My occupation is now of the most unpleasant nature, 
negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people 
under heaven. I despise and hate myself every hovir 
for engaging in such dirty work, and am supported 



178 HENRY GRATTAN. 

only by the reflection that without an Union the 
British emj)ire must be dissolved.' ' 

Castlereagh, however, who was the more immediate 
agent in corrupting-, appears to have performed his 
task with a perfect eqvianimity ; and Pitt, the great 
contriver and organiser of the whole, preserved 
throughout that tone of lofty piety, and serene, self- 
complacent virtue, which he knew so well how to 
assume. All the resources of ecclesiastical, judicial, 
county, and other patronage were strained to the 
utmost to find places for those who would support the 
Union, or to provide for their families and friends ; 
and when these did not suffice, sinecures, pensions, 
sums from the secret service money, were lavishly em- 
ployed. A direct, minute system of corruption was 
applied to every individual whose constancy was not 
regarded as unassailable. But it was soon found that 
all this would fail unless measures of a more sweeping 
kind were taken. The majority of the landlord class, 
in whose hands the county representation remained, 
were strongly opposed to the Union ; and Castlereagh 
in 1799 complained bitterly of 'the warmth of the 
country gentlemen, who spoke in great numbers and 
with much energy against the question ; ' ^ but the 
county seats were immensely outnumbered by the 
boroughs, and to purchase these was soon found to be 
necessary. Adopting a plan which he had recom- 
mended in 1785 in England, Pitt determined to 
recognise the patronage of a borough as a form of 
property, and, in the event of the abolition of the 
Irish Parliament, to compensate the patrons at the 
rate of 7,500L a seat. A million and a quarter was 
expended chiefly in this manner, and the selfish in- 

' Cornwiillis Corresponclence,' vol. iii. pp. 101, 102. 
^ ' Castlereagh Correspondenca,' Tol. ii. p. 143. 



THE UNION. 179 

terests of the most influential classes in Ireland passed 
to tlie side of the Union, while further compensation 
was given to other politicians whose interests it was 
believed would be injuriously affected by the measure. 

The precedent of 1800 was afterwards remembered 
when the English nomination boroughs were abolished 
in 1832 ; but all parties indignantly repudiated the 
notion of recognising such a principle in England. 
Another mode of corruption scarcely less efficacious 
was employed to influence the wealthier Irish gentry. 
Peerages to this class are always a peculiar object of 
ambition, and they had long been given in Ireland 
with a lavishness which materially degraded the posi- 
tion. In England, the simultaneous creation of twelve 
peers by Harley had been regarded as a scandalous and 
unprecedented straining of the prerogative ; but no 
sooner had the Union been carried than Lord Corn- 
wallis sent to England the names of sixteen persons, to 
whom he had expressly promised Irish peerages as 
rewards for their support of the Union. But these 
promotions were but a small part of what was found 
necessary ; twenty-two Irish peers were created, five 
peers received English peerages, and twenty peers 
received higher titles. 

It was a boast of Lord Castlereagh that, whatever 
might be the case with the majority of the Irish 
people, the preponderance of landed property was un- 
questionably on the side of the supporters of the 
Union. In making this calculation, he took into 
account the Irish peers, who were chiefly subservient 
to the Grovernment ; the bishops, who were very 
wealthy, and who, with two exceptions, voted for the 
Union ; and the great English noblemen who possessed 
estates in Ireland : but he also maintained that the 
balance of property in the Commons, though not in 



180 HENEY GEATTAN. 

the same degree, was on the same side.' Considering 
the part that was taken by the county members, this 
last calculation seems very questionable, but, if it be 
true, it is not difficult to explain it. The Ministers, 
by money or by dignities, had bought almost all the 
great borough-owners, as well as a large proportion of 
the members, and they thus made their success certain. 
One difficulty, however, still remained. It was found 
that several of the borough members were not prepared 
to vote for the Union, although their patrons had been 
bought. The most obvious way of meeting this diffi- 
culty would have been to have dissolved Parliament, 
but such a step would have given the free constituencies 
an opportunity of testifying their abhorrence of the 
measure. A simpler method was accordingly adopted. 
A place Bill, intended to guard the purity of Parlia- 
ment against the corruption of Ministers, by compelling 
all who accepted office to vacate their seats, had been 
recently passed, and the Ministers ingeniously availed 
themselves of this to consummate the triumph of cor- 
ruption. According to the code of honour which then 
prevailed both in England and Ireland, the members 
of nomination boroughs who were unwilling to vote as 
their patrons directed considered themselves bound to 
accept nominal offices, and thus vacate their seats, 
which were at once filled by staunch Unionists, in 
some instances by English and Scotch men wholly un- 
connected with Ireland. 

By these means the majority was formed which sold 
the constitution of Ireland. Lord Cornwallis, in a 
private letter, described its character with perfect 
frankness. ' The nearer the great event approaches,' 
he wrote, 'the more are the needy and interested 
senators alarmed at the effects it may possibly have on 
' ' Cornwallis Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 224. 



THE UNION. 181 

their interests and the provision for their families, and 
I believe that half of our majority would be at heart as 
much delighted as any of our opponents if the measure 
could be defeated.' ^ Grattan, who had unusual oppor- 
tunities of judging, afterwards expressed his opinion 
that, of the members who voted for the Union, only 
^revcn were unbribed.* 

While these events were taking place, the nation, as 
I have said, was prostrated and exhausted by the 
Eebellion. A fierce animosity divided the Catholics 
and Protestants ; the country was full of English 
troops ; and the reign of martial law, as well as the 
reaction of exaggerated loyalty that always follows 
insurrection, made men more than commonly timid 
in opposing the Government. A considerable pro- 
portion of the Catholic priests had been successfully 
bribed by the hope of payment, commutation of 
tithes, and emancipation. Their flocks, through fear, 
influence, or resentment, were chiefly passive, and the 
wealthiest Protestant proprietors had been purchased 
by peerages or places. But, notwithstanding all this, 
twenty-eight counties, twenty of them being unani- 
mous, petitioned against the Union ; and the petitions 
against it are said to have had more than 700,000 
signatures, while those in its favour had only 7,000.' 
Of the Irish Parliament itself, Mr. Grey, in the English 
House of Commons, gave the following analysis: 
' There are 300 members in all, and 120 of these 
strenuously opposed the measure, among whom were 
two-thirds of the county members, the representatives 
of the city of Dublin, and almost all the towns which 
it is proposed shall send members to the Imperial 
Parliament: 162 voted in favour of the Union; of 

' ' Cornwallis Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 228. 
* Grattan's Life, vol. v. p. 113. ' Ibid. p. 51. 



182 HENRY GRATTAN. 

these, 116 were placemen. Some of them were 
English generals on the staff, without a foot of ground 
in Ireland, and completely dependent upon Govern- 
ment.' ^ In the case of Ireland, as truly as in the case 
of Poland, a national constitution was destroyed by a 
foreign Power, contrary to the wishes of the people. In 
the one case, the deed was a crime of violence ; in the 
other, it was a crime of treachery and corruption. In 
both cases a legacy of enduring bitterness was the result. 
There are, indeed, few things more discreditable to 
English political literature than the tone of palliation, 
or even of eulogy, that is usually adopted towards the 
authors of this transaction. Scarcely any element or 
aggravation of political immorality was wanting, and 
the term honour, if it be applied to such men as 
Castlereagh or Pitt, ceases to have any real meaning 
in politics. Whatever may be thought of the abstract 
merits of the arrangement, the Union, as it was cai- 
ried, was a crime of the deepest turpitude — a crime 
which, by imposing, with every circumstance of in- 
famy, a new form of government on a reluctant and 
protesting nation, has vitiated the whole course of Irish 
opinion. The loyalty of a nation is chiefly due to the 
associations formed by the events of its history, but 
these in Ireland have tended with a melancholy uni- 
formity in the opposite direction. I have already 
observed how the three greatest English rulers, Eliza- 
beth, Cromwell, and William III., are associated in 
Ireland with memories of disaster and humiliation, 
and how the prostration of English power in America 
produced the Irish declaration of independence. Flood 
desired to employ the Volunteer movement to coerce 
the Parliament and Grovernment into a reform, but 
the policy of Grattan and Charlemont prevailed. The 

' Hansarcl, vol. xxxv. p. 60 (April 21, 1800). 



THE UNION. 183 

Volunteers, with a signal loyalty, disbanded, and left 
the question of reform to the constitutional forces 
of the nation. The result was that the prediction of 
Flood was fully verified ; the corruption of Parliament 
was carefully maintained and aggTavated, and it was 
ultimately made the means of destroying the consti- 
tution. The danger that menaced England from 
France in 1793 pi-oduced the concession of the suffrage 
to the Catholics. The weakness of Ireland after the 
Rebellion was made an opportunity of depriving her of 
her Legislature. The prospect of emancipation and of 
the commutation of tithes was held out to the Ca- 
tholics, and they, for the most part, abstained in con- 
sequence from actively opposing the Union, but when 
the measure had been carried Pitt sacrificed them 
with little more than a show of reluctance to the 
King. Eventually, however, the Catholics were eman- 
cipated and the tithes commuted, but the first mea- 
sure was due to an agitation which brought the 
country to the verge of civil war, and the second was 
the reward of almost universal rebellion against the 
law. Thus, generation after generation, by a slow, 
steady, and fatal process, the nation has been educated 
into disloyalty, taught to look with distrust upon con- 
stitutional means of obtaining its ends, and accustomed 
to regard outrage and violence as the invariable preludes 
of concession. 

That the Parliament which was swept away in 1800, 
and the political classes it represented, were exceedingly 
corrupt cannot reasonably be questioned. Almost all 
the honest patriots of the country were, I believe, on 
the side of the Opposition, and there were men among 
them who would have done honour to any legislative 
assembly ; but it is a mere delusion to regard the op- 
ponents of the Union as exclusively or mainly actuated 



184 HENRY GRATTAN. 

hj pure patriotism. Selfish local and personal motives 
contributed largely to their opposition, and they also 
attempted to carry their ends by corruption. When, 
however, the undoubted venality of the Parliament is 
urged as an apology for the Union, an Irish writer 
may be permitted to remind his readers to whom that 
venality is to be ascribed — who resisted every serious 
effort of reform. The corruption of the Legislature had 
been made a main function of the Government, and it 
was successfully accomplished. If, however, the spec- 
tacle presented by the majority in that Legislature in 
1800 was eminently despicable, it should not be for- 
gotten that there is no other instance in history of 
such extensive corruption being applied to a legislative 
body ; that in the first year, when the Union was 
brought forward, Parliament was proof against tempt- 
ation ; that the measure was ultimately carried by 
introducing into the nomination boroughs new mem- 
bers, in some instances wholly unconnected with Ire- 
land ; and that, defective as the constitution of 
Parliament undoubtedly was, it is extremely question- 
able whether the Union could have been carried had 
there been a dissolution. It must be added, too, that 
the corruption of the House of Commons was not so 
great as to prevent it on important occasions from 
yielding to the wishes of the people. The Irish House 
of Lords was a perfectly subservient body ; the Irish 
House of Commons never was. In the early part of the 
eighteenth century the refractory element in it was 
chiefly due to the extreme dislike of the Irish land- 
lords to tithes, while the English interest was for a 
long space of time directed by the Primates of the 
Church. Archbishop Boulter complains bitterly of the 
opposition he had on this ground to encounter, and of 
the desire of the Parliament on every occasion to 



CHARACTER OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 185 

injure the Chiircli.' At a later period the Octennial 
Bill was forced by public opinion on a very reluctant 
Parliament, and Parliament fully reflected the national 
enthusiasm in 1782. In Ireland, as in England, a cer- 
tain proportion of the borough-owuers were patriotic, 
and several of them came forward prominently in sup- 
port of the Keform Bill of Flood.^ Parliamentary re- 
form in Ireland would undoubtedly have been very 
difficult, but, had the Parliament continued, it would 
at last have been effected, as in England, by the in- 
fluence of the Grovernment, aided by the defection of 
some of the borough-owners, and supported by an over- 
whelming pressure of public opinion. The Irish Parlia- 
ment, though very corrupt if compared with the British 
Parliament at the end of the last century, and of course 
still more with that of our own day, was probably not 
much more corrupt, and was certainly much more tole- 
rant, than that which sat in London in the early years 
of the eighteenth century. It was guided habitually 
by sordid motives, but it not imfrequently rose above 
them ; and this is about as much as can be said for 
not a few of the Parliaments of England. No one has 
stigmatised the Irish Legislature in more vehement 
terms than Lord Macaulay, but he could hardly apply 
to it stronger terms of condemnation than he applied 
to the English Parliament of Walpole, ' who governed 
by corruption, because in his time it was impossible to 
govern otherwise.' ' A large proportion of the mem- 
bers,' we are told, ' had absolutely no motive to support 
any Administration except their own interest, in the 
lowest sense of the word. Under these circumstances, 
the country could be governed only hj corruption. . . . 
We might as well accuse the poor Lowland farmers, 

• See Boulter's Letters, vol. ii. pp. 154, 217, 23-1-236. 

* Grattan's Life, vol. iii. p. 123. 



186 HENRY GRATTAN. 

wlio paid blackmail to Eob Roy, of corrupting the 
virtue of the Highlanders, as accuse Sir R. Walpole of 
corrupting the virtue of Parliament.' 

But, in truth, the clouds of enthusiasm or obloquy 
which during the Repeal contest gathered so thickly 
around this portion of Irish history, make it even now 
difficult for either English or Irish writers to pronounce 
with perfect impartiality on the merits of the old Par- 
liament of Ireland. The time may come when the histo- 
rians of other nations may review its history, and I can- 
not but think that, while they will find much to blame, 
they will find in its later years at least something to ad- 
mire. In estimating the character of a Legislature, we 
should consider the period of its existence, the difficul- 
ties with which it had to contend, and the temptations 
to which it was exposed ; and if these things be taken 
into account, the Irish Parliament will not be wholly 
condemned. Seldom has even the Imperial Parliament 
exhibited a constellation of genius more brilliant, more 
varied, and more pure than that which is suggested by 
the names of Grattan and Flood, of Curran, Plunket, 
Hutchinson, and Burrowes. That a Legislature so defec- 
tive in its constitution should have continued to exist 
is indeed wonderful, but it is far more wonderful that 
it should have achieved what it did — that it should 
have asserted its own independence — that it should 
have riven the chains that fettered its trade — that it 
should have removed the most serious disabilities 
under which the mass of the people laboured — that it 
should have voluntarily given up the naonopoly of 
power it possessed, as representing the Protestants 
alone. With every inducement to religious bigotry, 
it carried the policy of toleration in many respects 
much farther than the Parliament of England. With 
every inducement to disloyalty, it was steadily faithful 



CnARACTER OF THE IRISH rARLIAMENT. 187 

to the connection. And its reputation has suffered by 
its fidelity, for the bitter invectives of the United 
Irishman Wolfe Tone have been reproduced by English 
writers as if they were the most impartial description 
of its merits.' 

' I argue not,' said Grrattan, ' like the Minister, from 
the misconduct of one Parliament against the being of 
Parliament itself. I value that Parliamentary consti- 
tution by the average of its benefits, and I affirm tliat 
the blessings procured by the Irish Parliament in the 
last twenty years are greater than the blessings afforded 
by British Parliaments to Ireland for the last century ; 
greater even than the mischiefs inflicted on Ireland by 
British Parliaments ; greater than all the blessings pro- 
cured by these Parliaments for their own country 
within that period. Within that time the Legislature 
of England lost an empire, and the Legislature of 
Ix'eland recovered a constitution.' 

Nor should it be omitted that the Irish Parliament 
was on the whole a vigilant and intelligent guardian of 
the material interests of the country. During the greater 
part of the century, indeed, it had little power except 
that of protesting against laws crushing Irish commerce ; 
but what little it could do it appears to have done. Its 
Journals show a minute attention to industrial ques- 
tions, to the improvement of means of communication, 
to the execution of public works. One of the most 
important events in English industrial history in the 
eighteenth century was the creation of a system of 
inland navigation by means of canals with locks — an 

' Thus, e.g., Macaulay, in his very fine speech ' on the state of Ireland,' 
liaving poured a multitude of fierce epithets on the Irish Parliament, con- 
cluded with this Tery singular sentence : ' I do not think that by saying 
this I have given offence to any gentleman from Ireland, however zealous 
for repeal he may be, for I only repeat the language of Wolfe Tone.' 



188 HENRY GEATTAN. 

improvement which is due to the genius of the engineer 
Brindley, and to the enterprise of the Duke of Bridge- 
water. The first canal of any magnitude in England 
was tliat between Worsley and Manchester, which was 
opened in 1761.' The experiment was practically a 
new one, for, with one very inconsiderable exception, 
there was no other canal in England. But the Irish 
Parliament appears to have immediately perceived the 
importance of the enterprise, and the energy and ala- 
crity with which it undertook to provide Ireland with 
a complete system of internal navigation is beyond all 
praise. In 1761 it voted a sum of 13,500Z. to the cor- 
porations of several inland navigations, and made 
special grants for a canal from Dublin to the Shannon, 
and for improving the navigation of the Shannon, Bar- 
row, and Boyne. Two years later works of the most 
extensive kind appear to have been undertaken. 
Among the votes of the Irish House of Commons in 
1763 we find grants for the construction of a canal 
between Dublin and the Shannon ; for a canal from 
Newry to Lough Neagh ; for a canal connecting Loch 
Swilly and Loch Foyle ; for a canal which, together 
with improvements on the river Lagan, was intended 
to complete the navigation between Loch Neagh and 
the sea at Belfast ; and for four other inland naviga- 
tions by canals.^ In the last years of the Irish Parlia- 
ment, or at all events from the concession of free trade 
in 1779 to the Eebellion of 1798, the material progress 
of Ireland was rapid and uninterrupted. In ten years, 
from 1782, the exports more than trebled.^ Lord Shef- 
field, who wrote upon Irish commerce in 1785, said, 
* At present, perhaps, the improvement of Ireland is as 
rapid as any country ever experienced ; ' and Lord 

' Macpherson's ' Annals of Commerce,' vol. iii. pp. 349-383. 
* See Grattan's Speech, May IS, 1810. 



DANGERS OF A SEPARATE LEGISLATURE. 189 

Clare, in a pamphlet which appeared in 1798, made a 
similar assertion with much greater emphasis. Speak- 
ing of the period that had elapsed since 1782, he said, 
* There is not a nation in the habitable globe which 
has advanced in cultivation and commerce, in agricul- 
ture and manufactui-es, with the same rapidity in the 
same period.' 

The dangers to the connection wliich have been sup- 
posed to spring from the existence of the Irish Parlia- 
ment have been chiefly illustrated by the Eebellion 
of 1798, and by the dissension on the Regency ques- 
tion. The former may be very rapidly disposed of; 
for to identify it in any degree with the indepen- 
dence of Parliament is to manifest a complete igno- 
rance of the facts of the case. The Rebellion of '98 
was produced by exceptional causes — by the excite- 
ment consequent upon the French Revolution, acting 
upon the excitement consequent on the recall of Lord 
Fitzwilliam. It was not represented by any party in 
Parliament. Grattan, who was the leader of the Irish 
Whigs, was so bitterly opposed to everything French 
that he completely separated himself on French ques- 
tions from Fox and the English Whigs, with whom lie 
generally acted, and who looked with favour on the 
Revolution. He once went so far as to speak of 
' eternal friendship with France' as one of the 'curses' 
to which Ireland would be doomed if emancipation were 
withheld. On the other hand, perhaps, no one ever 
hated the Parliament more than the United Irishmen. 
The people rebelled, not because there was an organ of 
public opinion in the land, but because that organ, 
while unreformed, did not sufficiently represent the 
national feeling. It was the energetic exertion of the 
Parliament that repressed the Rebellion before the 
arrival of the English troops ; and had it not been for 



190 HENRY GRATTAN. 

its prompt and decisive action, it is difficult to say 
how far the movement might have spread. 

The difference which arose between the English and 
Irish Parliaments concerning the Eegency was un- 
doubtedly a very serious embarrassment ; but its con- 
stitutional importance has, I think, been greatly exag- 
gerated. It was admitted on all sides that the Sove- 
reign possessed the same plenitude of power in Ireland 
as in England, but the question which arose when he 
had been incapacitated by insanity was absolutely 
novel and unprecedented. It had been foreseen by no 
statesman, and nothing in past English liistory was of 
any real assistance in solving it. The English Parlia- 
ment decided that the authority of providing for the 
discharge of the functions of royalty reverted to Par- 
liament, which had a right to impose what restrictions 
it pleased vipon the Regent. The Irish Parliament, 
adopting, it may be observed, the more modest view of 
the functions of Parliament — a view which has recently 
been defended by the high authority of Lord Campbell 
— maintained that in an hereditary monarchy the 
eldest son of the Sovereign has the same absolute 
right to his father's place during the incapacity, as he 
would have after the death, of the latter. The differ- 
ence was no doubt perplexing, and for a time danger- 
ous ; but it was extremely easy to guard against the 
possibility of its recurrence by a special law providing 
that whoever exercised the power of Regent de facto 
in England should exercise a similar power de jure in 
Ireland. A corresponding legal maxim was already 
recognised in the case of the Sovereign ; there would 
have been no real difficulty in extending it to the case 
of the Regent, and a resolution to that effect was actu- 
ally brought forward by the anti-Union party. 

If, however, we consider the question in a more 



DANGEBS OF A SEPARATE LEGISLATURE. 191 

general point of view, it must be admitted that a col- 
lision between two independent Legislatures was by no 
means an imlikely event ; and it is impossible to doubt 
that in that case the connection might be seriously 
endangered. The peril from this source was real and 
grave ; and it appears to me plain that for this, as for 
other reasons, the system of 1782 must eventually have 
been modified. At the same time the danger has been 
overrated ; and were it otherwise, a premature Union 
unaccompanied by emancipation was not the proper way 
of averting it. A very similar danger exists in the Bri- 
tish constitution itself, for if a difference arose between 
its three constituent elements, in which each obsti- 
nately refused to yield, Grovernment might be brought 
to a dead lock, or the nation to a revolution or a war 
of classes. The complexity of the constitution is re- 
tained, not because such a catastrophe is impossible, 
but because it is believed that the advantages prepon- 
derate over the disadvantages — because, although under 
certain circumstances that complexity might create 
discord and revolution, it is on the whole admirably 
calculated to prevent or allay them. The blended 
force of interest and patriotism inspire the Sovereign, 
the aristocracy, and the Commons with the spirit of 
compromise, which is essential to their co-operation. 
It is not true that independent Legislatures cannot be 
so constituted or their limits of action so defined that 
they should work in harmony. The Colonial Legisla- 
tures in the British empire are a striking proof to the 
contrary, and the federal principle which has existed 
for ages in the only flourishing European Eepublic, and 
which has contributed so largely to the wellbeing of 
the great Republic of the West, has of late years been 
advancing with considerable strides through monarch- 
ical Europe. At any period of the eighteenth century 



192 HENRY GRATTAN. 

England might easily have bound the Irish Legislature 
to herself by ties of interest of overwhelming force; for 
by the concession of free trade, and by throwing open to 
Irishmen the great careers of colonial administration, 
she could have made the connection a matter of vital 
importance to Ireland. That it is possible for reckless 
or ignorant agitators to disregard such considerations of 
national interest is but too true ; but it is hardly pos- 
sible that they could fail to exercise a restraining in- 
fluence upon a Parliament, or a public opinion, which 
was guided by the property and the intelligence of 
the country. 

But in truth the harmonious co-operation of Ireland 
with England depends much less upon the framework 
of the institutions of the former country than upon 
the dispositions of its people and upon the classes who 
guide its political life. With a warm and loyal attach- 
ment to the connection pervading the nation, the 
largest amount of self-government might be safely 
conceded, and the most defective political arrange- 
ments might prove innocuous. This is the true cement 
of nations, and no change, however plausible in theory, 
can be really advantageous which contributes to dimi- 
nish it. Theorists may argue that it would be better 
for Ireland to become in every respect a mere province 
of England ; they may contend that a union of Legis- 
latures, accompanied by a corresponding fusion of 
characters and identification of hopes, interests, and 
desires, would strengthen the empire, but as a matter 
of fact this was not what was effected in 1800. The 
measure of Pitt centralised, but it did not unite, or 
rather by uniting the Legislatures it divided the 
nations. In a country where the sentiment of nation- 
ality was as intense as in any part of Europe, it de- 
stroyed the national Legislature contrary to the 



THE UNION. 193 

manifest wish of the people, and by means so corrupt, 
treacherous, and shameful that they are never likely to 
be forgotten. In a country where, owing to the religious 
differences, it was peculiarly necessary that a vigorous 
lay public opinion should be fostered to dilute or 
restrain the sectarian spirit, it suppressed the centre 
and organ of political life, directed the energies of the 
community into the channels of sectarianism, drove its 
humours inwards,' and thus began a perversion of public 
opinion which has almost destroyed the elements of 
political progress. In a country where the people have 
always been singularly destitute of self-reliance, and 
at the same time eminently faithful to their leaders, it 
withdrew the guidance of affairs from the hands of 
the resident gentry, and, by breaking their power, pre- 
pared the ascendency of the demagogue or the rebel. 
In two plain ways it was dangerous to the connection : 
it incalculably increased the aggregate disloyalty of 
the people, and it destroyed the political supremacy of 
the class that is most attached to the connection. The 
Irish Parliament, with all its faults, was an eminently 
loyal body. The Irish people through the eighteenth 
century, in spite of great provocations, were on the 
whole a loyal people till the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, 
and even then a few very moderate measures of reform 
might have reclaimed them. Burke, in his '• Letters 
on a Regicide Peace,' when reviewing the elements 
of strength on which England could confide in her 
struggle with revolutionary France, placed in the very 
first rank the co-operation of Ii-eland. At the present 
day it is to be feared that most impartial men would 

' ' To give moderate liberty for griefs and discontentments to evapo- 
rate ... is a safe way ; for ho tliat turnetli tlie humours back, and 
maketh the wound bleed inwards, endangereth malign ulcers and per- 
nicious impostliumations ' — Bacon, On Seditions, 

10 



194 HENRY GRATTAN. 

regard Ireland in the event of a great European war 
rather as a source of weakness than of strength. More 
than seventy years have passed since the boasted mea- 
sure of Pitt, and it is unfortunately incontestable that 
the lower orders in Ireland are as hostile to the system 
of government under which they live as the Hungarian 
people have ever been to Austrian or the Eoman people 
to Papal rule ; tliat Irish disloyalty is multiplying 
enemies of England wherever the English tongue is 
spoken ; and that the national sentiment runs so strongly 
that multitudes of Irish Catholics look back with deep 
affection to the Irish Parliament, although no Catholic 
could sit within its walls, and although it was only 
during the last seven years of its independent existence 
that Catholics could vote for its members. Among the 
opponents of the Union were many of the most loyal 
as well as nearly all the ablest men in Ireland ; and 
Lord Charlemont, who died shortly before the measure 
was consummated, summed up the feelings of many in 
the emphatic sentence with which he protested against 
it. ' It would more than any other measure,' he said, 
' contribute to the separation of two coiratries, the 
perpetual connection of which is one of the warmest 
wishes of my heart.' 

In fact the Union of 1800 was not only a great 
crime, but was also, like most crimes, a great blunder. 
The manner in which it was carried was not only 
morally scandalous ; it also entirely vitiated it as a 
work of statesmanship. No great political measure 
can be rationally judged merely upon its abstract 
merits, and without considering the character and the 
wishes of the people for whom it is intended. It is 
now idle to discuss what might have been the effect of 
a Union if it had been carried before 1782, when 
the Parlianaent was still unernancipated ; if it had been 



THE UNION. 195 

the result of a spontaneous movement of public opi- 
nion ; if it had been accompanied by the emancipation 
of the Catholics. Carried as it was prematurely, in 
defiance of the national sentiment of the people and 
of the protests of the unbribed talent of the country, 
it has deranged the whole course of political develop- 
ment, driven a large proportion of the people into 
sullen disloyalty, and almost destroyed healthy public 
opinion. In comparing the abundance of political 
talent in Ireland during the last century with the 
striking absence of it at present, something no doubt 
may be attributed to the absence of protection for lite- 
rary property in Ireland in the former period, which 
may have directed an unusual proportion of the 
national talent to politics, and something to the Colo- 
nial and Indian careers which have of late years been 
thrown open to competition ; but when all* due allow- 
ance has been made for these, the contrast is sufficiently 
impressive. Few impartial men can doubt that the 
tone of political life and the standard of political talent 
have been lowered, while sectarian animosity has been 
greatly increased, and the extent to which Fenian 
principles have permeated the people is a melancholy 
comment upon the prophecies that the Union would 
put an end to disloyalty in Ireland. 

"While, however, the Irish policy of Pitt appears to 
me to be both morally and politically deserving of 
almost unmitigated condemnation, I cannot agree with 
those who believe that the arrangement of 1782 could 
have been permanent. The Irish Parliament would 
doubtless have been in time reformed, but it would 
have soon found its situation intolerable. Imperial 
policy must necessarily have been settled by the 
Imperial Parliament in which Ireland had no voice ; 
and, unlike Canada or Australia, Ireland is profoundly 



196 HENRY GRATTAN. 

affected by every change of Imperial policy. Connec- 
tion with England was of overwhelming importance 
to the lesser country, while the tie uniting them would 
have been found degrading by one nation and incon- 
venient to the other. Under such circumstances a 
Union of some kind was inevitable. It was simply a 
question of time, and it must some day have been 
demanded by Irish opinion. At the same time it would 
not, I think, have been such a Union as that of 1800. 
The conditions of Irish and English politics are so 
extremely different, and the reasons for preserving in 
Ireland a local centre of political life are so powerful, 
that it is probable a federal Union would have been 
preferred. Under such a system the Irish Parliament 
would have continued to exist, but would have been 
restricted to purely local subjects, while an Imperial 
Parliament, in which Irish representatives sat, would 
have directed the policy of the empire. 

It remains only to add a few words upon the manner 
in which the Ministers observed their pledges to the 
Catholics. After the deadly injury which had been 
done them by the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, it might 
have been supposed that a statesman of common up- 
rightness would have been peculiarly anxious that they 
should have no further ground of complaint. Lord 
Cornwallis and Lord Castlereagh, as the representatives 
of the Grovernment, had purchased the support of the 
leading Catholic prelates by a distinct intimation that 
in their opinion the Union wovild be a prelude to eman- 
cipation. Without giving any express promise which 
could impede the Union negotiations, they had excited 
their hopes by assuring them that the Ministers were 
sincerely and unanimously in favour of the principle of 
emancipation, and on the faith of that assurance they 
had solicited and obtained a most important service. 



THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 197 

The great body of the Catholics had been induced to 
remain passive ; and if the Catholics had been in active 
opposition, the Union, in the opinion of Lord Castle- 
reagh, could not have been carried. Whatever might be 
the exact terms of the intimation made to the Catliolic 
leaders, no statesman with a high sense of honour could 
question that the Cabinet were bound to do the very 
utmost in their power to carry emancipation. It was an 
obligation of honour of the plainest kind, and it was 
also a matter of policy of the most vital importance. 
The Union, carried as it was, outraged every patriotic 
and national sentiment in the country ; and if it was 
not to be a source of the most perennial bitterness, it 
was absolutely necessary that it should be accompanied 
or speedily followed by some great national boon, 
which might at least make some class of Irishmen look 
back on it with satisfaction. The Scotch Union had 
thrown open to Scotchmen tlie whole trade with the 
English Colonies in America, from which they had 
before been excluded, but this trade had been thrown 
open to Irishmen in 1779. Free trade between England 
and Ireland was indeed established by the Union ; but 
this advantage, though a very important one, was not 
sufficiently great or sufficiently calculated to strike the 
imagination to counteract its evil effects. Catholic 
emancipation alone could have the required effect, and 
on the conduct of the JMinisters at this momentous 
juncture it depended whether the Catholics were to be 
permanently loyal. Duped and injured as they had 
been in 1795, their loyalty was not likely to bear the 
strain of a second disappointment. 

It seemed at first as though the Government would 
do everything that could be expected. In the first 
King's Speech after the Union, the Sovereign was 
made to describe it as the happiest event of his reign ; 



198 HENRY G RATTAN. 

' being persuaded,' as the Speech continued, ' that 
nothing could so efifectually contribute to extend to 
my Irish subjects the full participation of the blessings 
derived from the British constitution.' It is not very 
clear what meaning these expressions conveyed to the 
Sovereign who used them ; but the Catholic leaders 
naturally read them in the light of the negotiations 
that had taken place, and as naturally interpreted 
them as a promise of emancipation. They assumed 
that the Catholics, who constituted three-quarters of 
the Irish people, were included under the denomina- 
tion of ' Irish subjects,' and that the right of sitting in 
Parliament was one of the blessings of the constitu- 
tion. It soon, however, appeared that the King was 
vehemently opposed to emancipation ; and the Chan- 
cellor, Lord Loughborough, through selfish, and the 
Primates of England and Ireland through ecclesiastical 
motives, inflamed his opposition. While his Ministers 
were bribing the Catholics to acquiesce in the Union 
by holding out to them the hope that it would secure 
their emancipation, the King was basing his policy on 
a directly opposite calculation. ' ]\Iy inclination to 
the Union with Ireland,' he wrote in February 1801, 
' was chiefly founded on a trust that the imiting of the 
Established Churches of the two kingdoms would for 
ever shut the door to any further measures with respect 
to the Eoman Catholics.' The language which had 
been held to the Catholics, and in reliance on which 
they had in general abstained from opposing the Union, 
had been held without the knowledge of the King, and 
without the smallest attempt having been made to learn 
how far his antipathy might be surmounted. This was 
in itself sufficiently culpable ; but after all that had been 
said and done, it is at least plain that Pitt was under 
the strongest moral obligation to do the utmost in his 



THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 199 

power to carry the measure. The King talked of 
abdicating if it were passed ; but even that alternative 
should have been faced, though it should not be for- 
gotten that the King was accustomed to use such 
threats whenever he urgently desired to carry his point, 
and that his language about the recognition of the 
independence of America, and about the admission of 
Fox into his Cabinet, was quite as strong as his lan- 
guage about Catholic emancipation. It was an im- 
perious obligation of national honour — it was a matter 
of vital importance to the future prosperity of the 
empire — that the Catholics should at this time have 
been emancipated, and there is no reasonable doubt 
that Pitt could have carried the measure had he deter- 
mined it. 

He did, it is true, resign office when the King re- 
fused to consent to it ; but there has seldom been a 
resignation which deserves less credit. The step was 
evidently taken solely because it was impossible that 
he could have acted otherwise with any decorum or 
without a palpable loss of character, and because Lord 
Grenville and some of his other colleagues had a 
strong and honourable sense of their duty to the 
Catholics. It is, however, quite plain that Pitt, 
having obtained the service he required from the 
Catholics, felt no real interest in their emancipation ; 
that he was resolved to incur for their sakes no diffi- 
culty he could possibly avoid, and was ready, on the 
first decent pretext, to sacrifice them. He had no 
personal objection to Catholic emancipation ; and on 
this, as on most other subjects, his views were large 
and liberal ; but on this, as on most other questions, he 
showed himself thoroughly selfish and dishonest, pre- 
pared to sacrifice any principle or any class rather than 
imperil his power or weaken or divide his followers. 



200 HENllY GEATTAIf. 

He resigned office into the hands of Addington, whom 
he regarded as a mere creature of his own, and from 
whom he imagined he might at any time resume 
it. He resigned it at a moment which was peculiarly 
convenient to him, because it had become necessary to 
negotiate with Napoleon, and the antecedents of Pitt 
rendered such a negotiation more difficult and himaili- 
ating for him than for any other English statesman.' 
He resigned it with his usual ostentatious display of 
public principle, because the King would not consent 
to Catholic emancipation ; but when the transfer of 
office had been effected, and when the agitation pro- 
duced by the transaction threw the King into one of 
his many attacks of temporary insanity, Pitt imme- 
diately availed himself of the opportunity to extricate 
himself from a political embaiTassment by finally 
abandoning the Catholics. That his position, in con- 
sequence of the King's attack, was a delicate one, 
may be readily admitted ; but there w^as a question 
of honour and a question of national policy which 
should have overridden all other considerations ; and 
he would have deserved more credit for his delicacy 
if it had not coincided so perfectly with his in- 
terest, and if it had not involved him in what may 
be not unfairly called a gross breach of faith with 
the Catholics. And, in fact, the utmost the most 



' I have no doubt that the Catliolic question was the real as well as 
the ostensible cause of the resignation, but the consideration in the text 
was an obvions one, and it greatly mitigated the sacrifice. Dundas said 
of Addington, ' If these new Ministers ^tay in and make peace, it will 
only smooth matters the more for us afterwards ; ' and Lord Malmesburj , 
who records this saying in his Diar}', mentions the impression that ' Pitt 
is inclined to let this Ministry remain in office long enough to make 
peace, and then turn them out.' — See Campbell's ' Chancellors,' viii. 
pp. 190, 191 ; and a remarkable letter by Dean Milman in Lewis's 
• Administrations of Great Britain,' p. 270. 



TEE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 201 

sensitive delicacy required was that he should have 
abstained at the time of the King's illness from press- 
ing the question. But this was not the course which 
he adopted. Ostensibly through attachment to the 
cause of Catholic emancipation, he resigned his office 
into the hands of a violent anti-Catholic states- 
man, who, as we now know, assumed it at his express 
desire. Only three weeks later, when the King had 
recovered, when Addington had formed his Ministry 
without difficulty, and when all was proceeding 
smoothly, he volunteered the announcement to the 
King that he would never during the King's life bring 
forward the Catholic question ; and he desired by this 
means, if the King or Addington would take the first 
step, to return to power. This Avas the end of the 
' unalterable sense of public duty ' which had led 
him, as he declared three weeks before, to resign office 
because he was not allowed to bring in the Catholic 
question witli his Majesty's ' full concurrence, and 
with the whole weight of Government.' This was 
the end of all the hopes by which Castlereagh had 
lulled to sleep the Catholic opposition to the Union. 
Addington, it is true, refused to be treated as a mere 
puppet, and to resign the digTiity he had just been 
entreated to assume ; but the treachery of Pitt was 
only postponed. He soon became Minister again,' and 
he resumed the reins of power on the understanding 
that he would not only not bring in Catholic emanci- 
pation during the King's lifetime, but that he would 
also not suffer it to be carried. As for the payment 
of the priests, which was another important part of the 
Union scheme, he never appears to have taken any 
real trouble on the subject. 

In the meantime, great apprehension was felt about 
the attitude of the Irish Catholics. Except during the 



202 HENRT GRATTAN. 

brief interval of tranquillity which followed the peace 
of Amiens, England was engaged in the most desperate 
struggle with France, and Catholic disloyalty appeared 
proportionately terrible. Immediately upon the re- 
signation of Pitt, and the installation of a new and 
anti-Catholic Ministry, the Lord-Lieutenant, Lord 
Cornwallis, drew up a paper, Avhich he privately cir- 
culated among the Catholic leaders, in which he 
earnestly exhorted them to patience under their dis- 
appointment, warned them against Jacobinical asso- 
ciations, and expatiated upon the great advantage 
their cause had gained in so many eminent statesmen 
being pledged not to take office without carrying it. 
This paper was rmofficial, but, emanating as it did 
from the Lord-Lieutenant, it had naturally great 
weight. It pi'oved however to be but one more added 
to the many deceptions the Irish Catholics experienced. 
Lord Cornwallis, who immediately after resigned his 
office, subsequently admitted that he had no authority 
for the statement that the retiring Ministers were 
pledged to abstain from office till they could carry 
Catholic emancipation. He had merely drawn an 
inference — though it must be admitted a very natural 
inference — from the situation. Whatever may have 
been the opinion of others, he at least believed that 
the' communications he had made to the Catholic 
leaders amounted to a moral pledge. When Pitt, three 
weeks after his resignation, offered to abandon the 
Catholics, he made none of his colleagues his con- 
fidants except Dundas, who was notorious among 
politicians for his lax sense of honour; but on his 
return to office, the attitude he resolved to assume 
towards them became manifest. They acted with the 
most signal moderation. They would at this time 
have gladly accepted emancipation accompanied by 



THE CATHOLIC QUKSTION. 203 

those safeguards which a few years later they so scorn- 
fully rejected. They abstained, not only from all 
disloyal associations, but even from all political agita- 
tion that miglit embarrass the Government ; and it 
was only in 1805 that their leaders brought over to 
London a petition for emancipation, which they asked 
Pitt, who was then in power, to present and to sup- 
port. He not only refused to do so, but even declared 
tliat he would oppose it; and, after a brilliant debate, 
the Catholics were defeated by an overwhelming 
majority through his influence. Can it be wondered 
that O'Connell found them apt scholars when he taught 
them to exchange a policy of moderation for one of 
violent agitation ? 

Grattan, in one of his speeches, described a portion 
of the English policy towards Ireland with character- 
istic energy, as one 'than which you would hardly 
find a worse if you went to hell for your principles, and 
to Bedlam for yovu- discretion.' I shall content myself 
with saying that we sliould have heard few eulogies of 
the honourable character of the Irish policy of Pitt if 
English writers were not accustomed to judge Irish 
politics by a standard of honour very different from 
tliat which they would apply to English ones. How 
his desertion of the Catholics was regarded by the most 
upright of his opponents is abundantly shown in the 
private letters of Fox and of Grey ; and the subse- 
quent career of O'Connell is a sufficient comment upon 
the wisdom of his proceedings. It has been main- 
tained, liowever, by some writers, who would probably 
have admitted that in these negotiations the part 
played by Pitt was very culpable, that the original 
scheme of the Union was at least an extraordinary in- 
stance of political genius. Lord Macaulay, who has 
probably done more than any other writer to accredit 



204 HENRY GRATTAN. 

this opinion, has described the project of combining 
in a single measure the legislative Union of the two 
countries, the emancipation of the Catholics, and the 
payment of their priests, as 'a scheme of policy so 
grand and so simple, so righteous and so humane, that it 
would alone entitle him to a high place among states- 
men.' I venture to think that this judgment is en- 
tirely erroneous. The project of a Union, and the 
project of settling the Catholic question by admitting 
Catholics to Parliament, and by paying their priests, 
were no novelties. They had for years been common- 
place subjects of discussion in political circles ; and 
one of the standard arguments against emancipating 
the Catholics had been that it would be dangerous to 
give them such power in a local Parliament. The ex- 
pediency of combining the two projects was perfectly 
obvious. The idea was so self-evident that it must 
have been suggested at a hundred dinner-tables, and it 
is hardly conceivable that it should not have occurred 
to any statesman who approved of both measures, and 
who was seeking to make the first popular in Ireland. 
The Union was emphatically one of that class of mea- 
sures in which the scope for statesmanship lies not in 
the conception but in the execution. Had Pitt carried 
it without offending the national sentiment — had he 
enabled the majority of the Irish people to look back 
on it with affection or with pride — had he made it the 
means of allaying discontent or promoting loyalty — 
he Avould indeed have achieved a feat of consummate 
statesmanship. But in all these respects he utterly 
failed. There was, it is true, no small amount of dex- 
terity of a somewhat vulpine order displayed in carry- 
ing the Bill ; but no measure ever showed less of that 
enlightened and far-seeing statesmanship which respects 
the prejudices and conciliates the affections of a nation, 



ENTERS THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT. 205 

and thus eradicates the seeds of disaffection and dis- 
content. 

When the Union was passed, Grrattan for a time re- 
tired from politics. His health had been for some 
time unsatisfactory, and his spirits were greatly de- 
pressed by a defeat which he regarded as the destruc- 
tion of the liberties of his country. He saw in it the 
overthrow of the entire labour of his life, and it un- 
folded to his piercing eye a long vista of agitation, of 
disloyalty, and disaster. For some time he could not 
])ear to hear it discussed in conversation ; his eyes often 
filled with tears when speaking of it, and even many 
years afterwards he occasionally broke into paroxysms 
of indignation on the subject, that contrasted strangely 
with his usual gentleness.^ The people, who had been 
paralysed by the late Eebellion, remained in a state of 
stupefied and sullen quiescence. Emmett's rebellion, 
Avhich took place in 1803, cannot be regarded as in any 
degree the consequence of the Union. It was but the 
last wave of the Eebellion of 1798, and originated in 
the overheated brain of an amiable and gifted, but 
most unpractical, enthusiast. One great cause, how- 
ever, still remained, and to the service of Catholics 
Grattan resolved to devote liis remaining years. He 
entered the British Parliament in 1805, and took his 
seat modestly on one of the back benches ; but Fox, 
exclaiming ' This is no place for the Irish Demosthenes ! ' 
drew him forward, and placed liim near himself. Great 

' He believed that the Union, among otlier effects, would have that of 
greatly lowering the character of the Irish representatives, and he ex- 
pressed his opinion with his usual odd emphatic exaggeration. 'You 
have swept away our constitution,' he once said to some English 
gentlemen ; ' you have destroyed our Parliament, but we shall have our 
revenge. We will send into the ranks of i/oiir Parliament, and into the 
very heart of your constitution, a hundred of the greatest scoundrels in 
the kingdom ! ' 



206 HENllY GEATTAN. 

doubts were felt about his success. The difference of the 
tone and habits of the two Parliaments, the advanced 
age of Grattan, the recent failure of Flood, and the 
cause Grrattan had assigned for that failure,^ suggested 
weighty reason for fear. Much anxiety, therefore, and 
much curiosity, were felt when he rose to speak on that 
memorable night when the Catholic question was re- 
opened. For a moment, it is said, the strangeness of 
his gestures, and the apparent diflBculty of his enun- 
ciation, served to confirm those fears ; but it was but 
for a moment. After almost the first passage he was 
listened to with an intense and ever-increasing admi- 
ration, and when he sat down it was felt that he had 
more than justified his reputation. It was, indeed, one 
of the very greatest speeches he ever delivered. It 
would be difficult to point out any other that displayed 
a more wonderful combination of powerful reasoning, 
eiiigram, imagination, and declamation. Pitt, who 
made the first motion of applause, exclaimed, ' Eurke 
told me that Grattan was a wonderful man for a popular 
audience, and I see that he was right.' Fox, in a pri- 
vate letter to Trotter, said, ' I am sure it will give you 
pleasure to hear that Grattan's success in the House of 
Commons was complete, and acknowledged even by 
those who had entertained great hopes of his failure^' 
The ' Annual Kegister ' called the speech ' one of the 
most brilliant and eloquent ever pronounced within 
the walls of Parliament.' It was in the course of this 
speech that, in adverting to the first Catholic Eelief 
Bill, he digressed into an eulogium of the Irish Parlia- 
ment ; and, speaking of the services he had rendered 
to its freedom, uttered that sentence so famous for its 

^ ' He -vras an oak of the forest too old and too gi-eat to be transplanted 
at fifty.' 



RELIGIOUS OPINIONS OF THE COUNTRY. 207 

touching and concentrated beauty : ' I watched by its 
cradle, I followed its hearse.' 

The Union, by making the public opinion of Eng 
land the arbiter of the Catholic question, had entirely 
altered its conditions ; and, as I have already endea- 
voured to show, had considerably increased its difficiil- 
ties. Public opinion had also about this period taken 
a direction strongly adverse to emancipation. The 
Tory reaction which followed the Eevolution was still 
in full force, and a religious movement had been for 
some time fermenting in England, which had in a 
great measure dispelled the indifference on doctrinal 
questions that had long been prevalent, and had greatly 
intensified the Protestant feeling among the people. 

It will be sufficiently evident to anyone who follows 
the history of the two Churches that their separation 
had reached its extreme limit when the Puritans were 
dominant in England and Bossuet was ruling public 
opinion in France. The Puritans represented Protes- 
tantism in its most exaggerated and undiluted form ; 
while Bossuet, Avho exercised a greater influence over 
the lay mind than perhaps any theologian since Calvin, 
was maintaining the tenets of his Church with the most 
unflagging zeal. He was indeed so far from adopting 
any extreme or Ultramontane opinions that he even en- 
tered into a correspondence with Leibnitz on the possi- 
bility of a compromise ; but he asserted most empha- 
tically the great distinctive principle of authority ; he 
defined the points of difference with such a rigid accu- 
racy that no evasion was possible ; and he laid a greater 
stress upon dogmas as distinguished from morals than 
perhaps any other popular writer of his Church. After 
this period, for about a century, the two systems seemed 
rapidly approximating. If we compare the sermons of 
Massillon with those of Bossuet we see the change in 



208 HENKY GRATTAN. 

its commencement ; if we compare the sermons of Blair 
or of Kirwan with those of the early Anglican divines, 
we see it in its completion. Dogma had formerly 
almost superseded practical teaching, but it now in its 
turn gave way. The Christian preacher became at last 
simply an expounder of morals. A well-regulated dis- 
position, a virtuous life, and an active benevolence, 
were represented as almost a summary of Christianity. 
The Bible was regarded as a repository of noble maxims 
and of instructive examples. The triumph of religion 
would be merely the perfection of order, the apotheosis 
and the completion of government. This tendency may 
be in part ascribed to the natural reaction and fatigue 
that followed the fierce controversies of the preceding 
century ; and it was also in a great measure due to the 
prevalence of scepticism in both Churches. In England 
sceptical opinions had been maintained openly by Bo- 
lingbroke, and Gibbon, and Hume ; and if the whole 
light literature at the close of the last century was not 
Voltairian in its spirit, it was probably owing in a 
great measure to the extraordinary influence of Dr. 
Johnson. In France no such restraint existed. Voltaire 
and Eousseau towered far above their contemporaries, 
and never disguised their sentiments. The sarcasms of 
Voltaire turned the whole stream of ridicule and wit 
against the Church ; while the burning eloquence, the 
impassioned earnestness, and the intense realising 
powers of Eousseau, fell with terrific effect on its tot- 
tering system. The University of Paris issued an 
answer to the ' Vicar of Savoy,' but it is now almost 
forgotten. All the real talent of the country seemed 
ranged against the established faith, and its defenders 
were compelled to adopt an apologetical and an evasive 
tone. It was quite true that all infants who died un- 
baptised were excluded from heaven, but then hell was 



MOVEMENTS OF THEOLOGY. 209 

an indefinite expression, and comprised a variety of 
conditions, and St. Augustine was not prepared to say 
that it would be better for those children had they 
never been born. Purgatory was undoubtedly a Ca- 
tholic doctrine, but it was not necessarily the place of 
torment by fire which was portrayed in the pictures in 
every church. Though the priests had at one time 
celebrated almost every royal marriage in Spain by an 
auto-da-fe, and though a Pope had struck medals in 
commemoration of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
yet the spirit of Torquemada and of Catherine de' Me- 
dicis might be safely reprehended by the orthodox. 
Tlie doctrine of invincible ignorance was brought pro- 
minently forward. The doctrine of infillibility was 
interpreted in its broadest sense, and the attribute was 
applied not to an individual, but to the whole Cliurch. 
Above all, the purity of the moral teaching of Chris- 
tianity was asserted and displayed, while its special 
doctrines were allowed to fall into the background. In 
this manner the two religions began rapidly to as- 
similate, when the tide again turned, and a violent 
revulsion set in. In Roman Catholic countries Ultra- 
montanism once more became dominant after the Re- 
volution, but it purchased its triumph dearly. The 
priests taught the most extreme Roman Catholic doc- 
trines, while the educated laity remained disciples of 
Montaigne, if not of Voltaire. In England the Me- 
thodists had begun their labours ; and, after many 
years of comparatively unnoticed preaching among the 
poor, their principles began to leaven the higher ranks, 
and to embody themselves in the great Evangelical 
party. 

The Ultramontane and the Evangelical movements 
completely altered the attitude of the two religions 
both towards scepticism and towards each other. 



210 HENRY GRATTAN. 

Voltaire had maintained in France that the doctrines 
of the Church were contrary to reason and to the moral 
sense ; and Ultramontanism answered that these were 
absolutely incompetent to judge them. Bolingbroke 
had argued in England that the moral teaching of 
Christianity existed in the works of the pagan philo- 
sophers ; and the Evangelical replied that a moral 
system had no efficacy as a means of salvation, and was 
only enforced in the New Testament as a secondary 
and subordinate object. The two sections of Chris- 
tianity had been approximating, on the ground of 
common duties ; and the Evangelical taught that man 
could not perform duties acceptably, and that the 
whole scope and purport of Christianity was to teach a 
doctrine which the Church of Eome refused to admit. 
Against this Church, then, as the most powerful, the 
most subtle, and the most specious opponent of trutli, 
all the energies of the Evangelicals were directed. 
They traced its lineaments in every intimation of 
coming apostacy contained in the prophetic writings. 
They recognised it as the horn of Daniel ' speaking 
proud things '• — as the mystic Babylon, red with the 
blood of the saints — as the Man of Sin, who was to be 
revealed when the Eoman empire was removed — as 
the spirit of Antichrist, that was to seduce and to 
triumph in the latter days. They revived the histo- 
ries of bygone persecutions that transcended the worst 
efforts of paganism, and laboured with the same un- 
tiring assiduity in the pulpit and on the liustings, in 
the religious tale and the newspaper article, to repress 
and to crush the Church they feared. 

The Evangelical movement was somewhat slow in 
spreading to Ireland, and during the greater part of 
the eighteenth century the Irish Protestant clergy 



PROTESTANT TOLERANCE. 211 

were in general far from Ligots. The theological tem- 
perature, as I have said, was very moderate, and the 
habit, which the penal laws produced, of ostensibly 
passing from one religion to the other in order to join 
a profession or preserve a property, contributed to 
lower it. In 1745, it is true, under the fear of an 
impending invasion, a kind of panic of intolerance 
passed through the clergy, and they were mischievously 
active in denouncing the Catholics, but for the most 
part they were very harmless men, who discharged social 
and philanthropic functions of unquestionable utility, 
meddled little with dogmatic theology, and seldom 
interfered with their Catholic neighbours. The tithe 
riots of the eighteenth century had little or no con- 
nection with religious animosity, and the Protestant 
landlords were almost as hostile to the tithes as their 
tenants. In 1725, when the penal laws were at their 
height, a Protestant clergyman named Synge, in a 
very remarkable sermon preached before the Irish 
House of Commons, and published by its order, urged 
the duty of granting perfect toleration to the Catholics. 
Ten years later the illustrious Bishop Berkeley, in his 
' Querist,' advocated their admission into Dublin Uni- 
versity, and their exemption fi-om the obligation of 
attending chapel or divinity lectures — a policy which 
was carried out in Ireland near the end of the century. 
The famous Bishop of Derry was one of the most 
uncompromising supporters of the Catholic claims. 
He was, no doubt, too violent and eccentric to be taken 
as a fair specimen of his order, but the great Eelief Bill 
of 1793, which gave the Catholics the suffrage, was 
warmly supported by several bishops, and acquiesced 
in by the majority of the clergy; and it produced 
nothing of that frantic intolerance which, both among 



212 HENRY GRATTAN. 

the English and Irish clergy, was ai'oused by the much 
less important measure of 1829.' Dublin University 
has always been looked upon as a stronghold of Irish 
Protestanism, but it was by many years the first univer- 
sity in the kingdom to throw open its degrees to 
Catholics, and even in the years that followed the Union 
it was represented by Plunket, at a time when that 
great orator was leading the Catholic cause. 

It would be, I conceive, a mistake to attribute the 
tolerance of the Irish Protestants towards the close of 
the eighteenth century to the prevalence of conscious 
scepticism. Avowed and reasoned free thought has 
never been very common in Ireland,'^ and the Irish 
literature towards the end of the last century and the 
beginning of the present is full of the usual denun- 
ciations of scepticism, and the usual depreciation of 

' A contemporary Irish historian thus describes the attitude of the 
clergy on this occasion : ' What a picture of liberality and moderation 
did the conduct of the Established clergy of Ireland exhibit during the 
recent application for Catholic emancipation ! Many pious and learned 
prelates exerted their eloquence in Parliament in support of Catho- 
licity ; and the entire body of the Protestant clergy, in tiieir conduct on 
this occasion, have fully affirmed themselves the disciples of the meek, 
mild, and gentle Author of Christianity.' — Mnllala's Irish Affairs (1795), 
vol. ii. p. 260. 

- Primate Boulter complained bitterly of ' the growth of atheism, 
profanity, and immorality ' in Ireland, but it seems to have shown itself 
chiefly in resistance to tithes. Toland was an Irishman, but lived in 
England, and when he went to Ireland he was denounced from the 
pulpit, and such an outcrj' was raised that it became dangerous to speak 
to him, and he could hardly procure the necessaries of life. He appears 
however to have been giiilty of much imprudence in propagating his 
views. Parliament ordered his ' Christianity not Mysterious ' to be 
burnt, and the author to be arrested, and he only escaped by precipitate 
flight. Molyneux has described the transaction in letters to Locke, 
and South wrote in great glee to the Archbishop of Dublin: 'Your 
Parliament presently sent him packing, and without the help of a faggot 
soon made the kingdom too hot for him.' — Disraeli's Calamities of 
Authors, vol. ii. p. 133. 



PROTESTANT TOLERANCE. 213 

sceptical writers.' At the same time the t^'^pe of pre- 
vailing Protestantism, like that of the prevailing 
Catholicism, was singularly colourless and undogmatic. 
I have already quoted some sentences from the speeches 
of Grattau, describing the gradual assimilation of the 
two creeds, and I may add that no one appears to have 
been scandalised by the somewhat startling summary 
of ecclesiastical history which the same speaker threw 
out in one of his greatest orations : ' The only Divine 
institution we know of — the Christian religion — did so 
corrupt as to have become an abomination, and was 
rescued by Act of Parliament.' In an" age when 
sectarian virulence has obtained a great empire over 
the minds of men, it seldom fails to reflect itself in the 
hallucinations of speculators in unfulfilled prophecy; 
but, as we have already seen, Mr. Dobbs, who was the 
most enthusiastic Irish labourer in this field, was a 
warm advocate of the Catholic claims. By far the 
most eminent man in the Protestant Church at the 
end of the last century was Dean Kirwan, who, if 
estimated by the power he exercised over the feelings 
of his auditors, by the beneficence he evoked, and by 
the judgments of his contemporaries, at a time when 
the standard of eloquence was extremely high, must be 
placed as a pulpit orator almost on a level with White- 
field. This very remarkable man had been originally 
a Catholic, and one of the reasons he alleged for joining 
the Established Church was, that he should thus obtain 
more extensive opportunities of doing good. He rigidly 

' E.g. ' The writings of Humo and Gibbon, which have been directly 
or indirectly levelled against the Christian religion, have long sinca 
sunk into merited oblivion.' — MuUala's View of Irish Affairs from the 
BevoliUion (1795), vol. ii. p. 280. ' Surely a Voltaire, a Eousseau, or a 
Gibbon wore as inferior to Colin Maclaurin in mental power as they 
were in bodily strength to Hercules or Sampson.' — Byans History of 
the Effects of Beligion (1802), p. 421. 



214 HENRY GEATTAN. 

abstained in all his sermons from every topic relating 
to the differences between the two Churches, making it, 
as he said, his main object 'to banish religions pre- 
judices, to diffuse through society the great blessings 
of peace, order, and mutual affection, and to represent 
Christianity as a practical institution of religion de- 
signed to regulate the dispositions and improve the 
characters of men ; ' and he at last devoted his talents 
entirely to pleading the cause of charitable institutions. 

A society could not have been very bigoted when it 
most popular preacher adopted such a tone. Kirwan 
though a man of spotless reputation and splendid genius, 
never obtained any more lucrative preferment than a 
deanery of 400^. a year, and was able to leave no fortune 
to his children ; but something of his spirit was shown 
among his more fortunate brethren. Law, the Bishop 
of Elphin, was accustomed to distribute among his 
Catholic parishioners the best books of their own authors, 
saying that, as he could not make them good Protes- 
tants, he at least wished them to be good Eoman 
Catholics. 

I have dwelt at some length upon these facts, for 
they are not much known in England, and they have a 
considerable importance in the history of public opinion 
in Ireland. And, indeed, the amount of intolerance 
that formerly existed in both religions has been not a 
little exaggerated ; for atrocities which were really due 
to an liostility of races have been ascribed to the 
conflict of tlieir religions. The Irish have not generally 
been an intolerant or persecuting people. The early 
history of the introduction of Christianity into Ireland, 
though not, as has been said, absolutely bloodless,* was 
at least unusually pacific, and it was an old reproach 
against Irishmen, that their country, which had pro- 

• There is a discussion on this point in Todd's ' Life of St. Patrick.' 



REVIVAL OF SECTARIANISM. 215 

diiced innumeraljle saints, had produced no martyr. 
During the atrocious persecutions of Mary, the English 
Protestants Avere perfectly unmolested in Ireland. The 
massacre of Protestants in 1642 was so little due to 
religious causes that the only Englishman of eminence 
who was treated by the rebels with reverence and 
care was Bishop Bedell, who was one of the most 
energetic Protestants of his age, and the first Irish 
bishop who attempted to proselytise among the Ca- 
tholics. The Irish people have always been more 
superstitious than the English, and perhaps than the 
Scotch, but their superstitions have usually taken a 
milder form. Many hundreds of unhappy women 
have perished on the charge of witchcraft both in 
England and Scotland since the Eeformation, but I 
am not aware of the witch mania having ever raged 
in Ireland to a degree at all comparable to that in 
England under James I. and the Puritans, and in Scot- 
land during a great part of the seventeenth century.' 
Whatever animosity the j^enal laws produced had in 
a great measure subsided towards the end of the 
eighteenth century, and it would be difficult to find in 
any country more moderate or liberal members of their 
respective faiths than Kirwan, the greatest preacher 
among the Irish Protestants, and O'Leary, the greatest' 
writer among the Irish Catholics. 

The elements of religious animosity, however, though 
they were almost dormant, existed in abundance, and 
several ca^ises concurred, with the rise of the Evangelical 

' A famous Irish witch case — that of Dame Alice Kyteler, in 1324 — 
has been repi'intcd by the Camden Society, and a few imimportant 
later ones are given by Glanvil in liis ' Sadducismus Triumphatns. 
Hutchinson, Wright, and Madden appear to have found no other Irish 
cases. It is much to be wished that some Irish archaeological society 
would investigate more fully than (as far as I am aware) has yet been 
done the history of Irish witchcraft. 



216 IIENRY G RATTAN. 

movement, in resuscitating them. The many outbursts 
of lawless violence that convulsed the country from 
the middle of the century had been for a long time 
entirely unconnected with religion. Eack-rents, the 
fiscal pressure of tithes, the invasions of common land 
by the landlords, the law which compelled workmen to 
devote a certain amount of unpaid labour to repairing 
the county roads, were the causes or pretexts of the 
appearance of the Whiteboys, the Oakboys, and the 
Hearts of Steel. In 1785, however, a new type of 
disturbance began. Protestants in the county Armagh, 
and afterwards in other districts, began to form bands 
under the name of Peep-of-Day Boys, and to attack 
and persecute the Catholics, who then formed societies 
called ' Defenders,' which were at first a kind of 
irregular police, and soon after became bands of de- 
predators. The Relief Bill of 1793, conferring votes 
upon the Catholics, produced some slight economical 
disturbance ; for landlords, who had especially favoured 
Protestant tenants on account of the political influence 
they could give, now freely admitted the competition 
of Catholics, It wns not, however, till the furious 
passions aroused by the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam had 
broken out that religious animosity became intense. 
In 1795 the Orangemen came into existence, and 
signalised themselves by spreading riot over a great 
part of the north of Ireland. The battle of the 
Diamond, in which they defeated a large body of 
Catholics, and in which forty-eight men were killed, 
took place in the Decen\ber of this year, and, being 
sedulously commemorated by the Orangemen, it pro- 
duced an intense and an enduring animosity. Many 
Catholics were compelled to emigrate from the county 
Armagh, and take refuge in Connaught. As the 
Eebellion became imminent, the violence of sectarian 



DR. DUIGENAN. 217 

feeling rose to the highest point, and all who tried 
to allay it were looked upon with suspicion. The 
name of Gr rat tan was struck off the Privy Council, and 
the Dublin University authorities removed his picture 
from their hall, and replaced it by that of Clare. 
When the Rebellion actually broke out, it aroused 
all the worst and fiercest passions of the nation. Wesley 
had before this turned aside from his religious labours 
to write against the removal of the penal laws. In the 
Irish Government, Lord Clare was fiercely anti-Catholic, 
and similar sentiments were energetically maintained 
in the Irish and afterwards in the English House of 
Commons by the notorious Dr. Duigenan. 

This very singular personage is said to have been 
himself originally a Roman Catholic. He was a man 
of low extraction, but of some talents, and had been a 
Fellow of Trinity College, where he wrote a book 
against the provost, Hely Hutchinson. He obtained a 
seat in the Irish House of Commons, and laboured 
without success to procure the cessation of the May- 
nooth grant which had been made during the ad- 
ministration of Lord Fitzwilliam. He was one of the 
warmest supporters of the Union, and in the English 
Parliament the most vituperative and indefatigable 
opponent of the Catholic claims. He adopted that 
method which is still employed by some politicians, of 
exhuming all the immoral sentiments of the school- 
men, the Jesuit casuists, and the mediaeval councils, 
and parading them continually before the Parliament 
and before the country.' Against this system Grattan 
energetically protested. 'No religion,' he said in one 

' It is curious that he was married to a Roman Catholic ; he pro- 
posed to her and was refused when young, but was accepted many years 
after, when she was a widow. In spite, however, or perhaps in conse- 
quence of matrimony, his antipathy to the Church of Rome continued 
unabated to the end. 

11 



218 HENRY GBATTAN. 

of his speeches, ' can stand if men, without regard to 
their God, and with regard only to controversy, shall 
rake out of the rubbish of antiquity the obsolete and 
quaint follies of the sectarians, and affront the majesty 
of the Almighty with the impudent catalogue of their 
devices ; and it is a strong argument against the pro- 
scriptive system that it helps to continue this shocking 
contest ; theologian against theologian, polemic against 
polemic, until the two madmen defame their common 
parent, and expose their common religion.' 

Every year the state of feeling in Ireland became 
worse. As is always the case, the destruction of national 
feeling gave an increased bitterness to sectarian con 
troversy, and turned almost all the energies of the 
country into that channel. The Eoman Catholics, 
who had formerly been almost passive, began to agitate 
vehemently, and to complain bitterly that Pitt opposed 
their emancipation, though he had formerly professed 
himself favourable to it. The Evangelical movement 
in Ireland had chiefly assumed an aggressive -character, 
and the effects of the Eebellion of '98 had not yet 
subsided. A few years after the Union there were no 
less than five distinct parties agitating actively: the 
French party, who cherished the traditions of '98 ; 
the armed Orangemen, who were pillaging in the 
county Armagh ; the more pacific Tories, who were 
arguing against emancipation ; the moderate Liberals, 
who followed Grattan, and comprised a large sec- 
tion of the Protestants, and almost all the higher 
orders of Eoman Catholics ; and the clerical and de- 
mocratic party, which was beginning to rise imder the 
inspiration of O'Connell. When we add to this that 
the English public was becoming thoroughly per- 
meated by the Evangelical movement, the difficulty of 
Grattan's position becomes very apparent. 



THE VETO. 219 

He determined to keep himself entirely independent. 
He refused office in Fox's Ministry, which came in in 
1806, and he refused to accept 4000L Avhich the Roman 
Catholics subscribed in the same year to defray the 
expenses of his election for Dublin. He kept up a 
correspondence with every section of the Constitutional 
Liberals, but he would not place himself in the hands 
of any. In 1807 he incurred much unpopularity by 
supporting the Government Coercion Bill, which he 
believed to be necessary on account of the disorganised 
condition of the country.' In 1808 he entered into 
the Veto question. This proposition, which at one time 
created so much agitation, was an attempt to produce 
a compromise ; the English Parliament consenting to 
emancipate the Catholics, on the condition that a 
power of veto was reserved to the English Sovereign 
in the election of Catholic bishops. The proposal was 
then much discussed and warmly accepted by the whole 
body of Roman Catholics of England, by the upper 
order of those of Ireland, and by Grrattan himself. The 
Court of Rome was very conciliatory, and the Irish 
bishops in 1808, by the agency of Dr. Milner, declared 
their willingness to accept it ; but they soon yielded 
to the popidar outcry and to the influence of O'Connell, 
and under the leadership of the same prelate vehemently 
opposed it. This produced a complete schism between 
the gentry and the clergy, and undoubtedly retarded 
the triumph of the cause. In 1813 a Bill, accom- 
panied by the veto and some minor securities, actually 
passed a second reading, and was finally rejected by 
a majority of only four, but the bishops afterwards 

' He said lio hoped to secure to Ireland a ' reversionary interest in the 
constitution.' Ho adopted a similar course in 1814. The perfect courage 
with which Grattan always risked his popularity for what he thought 
the interest of his country is one of the finest traits of his character. 



220 HENRY GKATTAN. 

denounced it. In the following year the Catholic Board, 
at the suggestion of O'Connell, called upon Grrattan 
to place himself under their direction, and upon his 
refusal took their petition out of his hands, and 
entrusted it to Sir Henry Parnell. 

i It was touching to see the old statesman thus super- 
seded in the cause he had served so long, yet rising 
without one word of complaint, of recrimination, or of 
bitterness, to support his yoimger colleague. The 
more moderate party still made him their representa- 
tive, and nothing in his whole career is more admirable 
than the good taste and the self-abnegation which 
he manifested throughout. He made it a rule, as 
he said, ' never to defend himself at the expense 
of his country,' and he displayed the same zeal 
and the same eloquence as when his popularity was 
greatest. The ill-feeling was at one time so strong 
that, after his election for Dublin in 1818, he was 
assaulted by a mob in the streets. All parties were 
heartily ashamed of the act, and the Eoman Catholics 
and the Orangemen reciprocally charged each other 
with the guilt.' Notwithstanding this ebullition, there 
can be little doubt that he rose higher and higher in 
the estimation of the educated of all parties, and that 
the moderation and the exquisite tact he manifested 
exercised a most powerful influence upon Parliament. 
O'Connell adopted an entirely different course ; but, as 
we shall see, O'Connell's object was, in all probability, 
a different one ; and even when opposing Grattan, he 
extolled his patriotism in tlie highest rerms. A living- 
historian has noticed, on the authority of Sir E. Peel, 
a curious indication of the veneration with which 

' Giattan himself, when asked by some English friends about the 
cause of the riot, answered: 'It was religion — it was religion— and 
religion broke my head.' 



HIS DEATH. 221 

G rattan was at this time regarded The members who 
had sat with him in the Irish House of Commons were 
accustomed in the English House always to address 
him with a ' Sir,' as they would the Speaker, and this 
custom was followed by Lord Castlereagh at a time 
when he was the leader of the House.' 

To the Catholic question Grattan devoted the en- 
tire energies of his latter years. With the exception 
of one very brilliant and very successful speech in 
favour of immediate war with France, in 1815, he 
never spoke at length on any other subject. In 1819 
he was defeated by a majority of only two ; and in 
1820 he went over to London, to bring the subject 
forward again, when the illness under which he had 
for some time been labouring assumed a more violent 
and deadly character. He lingered for a few days, 
retaining to the last his full consciousness and interest 
in public affairs. Those who gathered around his 
death-bed observed with emotion how fondly and how 
constantly his mind reverted to that Legislature which 
he had served so faithfully and had loved so well. It 
seemed as though the forms of its guiding spirits rose 
more vividly on his mind as the hour approached when 
he was to join them in another world ; and, among the 
last words he is recorded to have uttered, we find a 
warm and touching eulogium of his great rival. Flood, 
and many glowing recollections of his fellow-labourers 
in Ireland. He passed away tranquilly and happily on 
June 6, 1820. He died, as a patriot might wish to 
die, crowned with honours and with years, with the 
love of friends and the admiration of opponents, leaving 
a nation to deplore his loss and not an enemy to obscure 
his fame. 

It is at the tombs of great men that succeeding 

' Lord Mahon's ' History of England.' 



222 HENRY GRATTAN. 

generations kindle the lamp of patriotism ; and it 
might have been supposed that he whose life was 
fraught with so many weighty lessons, and whose 
memory possesses so deep a charm, would have rested 
at last in his own land and among his own people. 
AnotheVj dUd, as it would seem to some, a nobler lot, 
was reserved for Grattan. A request was made to his 
friends that his remains might rest in Westminster 
Abbey, and that request was complied with. He lies 
near the tombs of Pitt and Fox. The place is an 
honourable one, but it was the only honour that was 
bestowed on him. Not a bust, not an epitaph marks 
the spot where the greatest of Irish orators sleeps ; but 
one stately form seems to bend in triumph over that 
unnoticed grave. It is the statue of Castlereagh, ' the 
statesman of the legislative Union.' 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

While the Union was under discussion in the Irish 
Parliament no class of persons exerted themselves more 
energetically in opposing it than the Dublin lawyers. 
Among the meetings they held for this purpose there 
was one which assumed a peculiar significance from its 
being composed entirely of Eoman Catholics. They 
assembled to protest against the assertion that the 
Eoman Catholics, as a body, were favourable to the 
measure ; to express their opinion that it would exer- 
cise an injurious influence ujdou the struggle for eman- 
cipation ; and to declare that were it otherwise they 
did not desire to purchase that boon at the expense of 
the independence of the nation. Military law was 
then reigning, and a body of troops, imder Major Sirr, 
were present at the Exchange to watch the proceedings. 
It was under these rather trying circumstances that a 
young lawyer, 'trembling,' as he afterwards said, 'at 
the sound of his own voice,' rose to make his maiden 
speech. He delivered a short address against the Union, 
which, if it contained no very original or striking 
views, had at least the merit of exhibiting the common 
arguments in the clearest and most convincing light ; 
and he shortly after hurried to a newspaper-office to 
deposit a copy for publication. This young lawyer was 
Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish agitator. I confess 
that it is not without some hesitation that I approach 
this part of my subject, for the difficulty of painting the 
character of O'Connell with fairness and impartiality 



224 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

can hardly be exaggerated. 'Never, perhaps,' as has 
been said, ' was there a man at once so hated and so 
loved ; ' and it may be doubted whether any public 
man of his time was the object of so much extravagant 
praise and blame. On the whole, however, the latter 
greatly preponderates. For many years the entire press 
of England, and a large section of that of Ireland, was 
ceaselessly employed in denouncing him. All parties 
in England were combined against him, and in Parlia- 
ment he had to bear alone the assaults of statesmen 
and of orators of the most varied opinions. By the 
more violent Irish Protestants he was regarded with 
feelings of mingled hatred and terror that almost 
amounted to a superstition; and the failure of the 
last great struggle of his life, as well as the disastrous 
condition of the country at the time of his death, has 
been very injurious to his reputation. 

Daniel O'Connell was born in the county of Kerry, in 
the year 1775. His family was one which ha,d for a 
long time occupied a prominent position among the 
Catholics of the county, which was much noted for its 
national feeling, and, it must be added, greatly addicted 
to smuggling. It was in after-years remarked as a 
curious coincidence that its crest bore the proud motto 
' Oculus O'Connell Salus Hibernise.' During his boy- 
hood the penal laws were still unrepealed, though much 
relaxed in their stringency, and the poorer Eoman 
Catholics had sunk into that state of degradation which 
compulsory ignorance necessarily produces, while the 
richer drew their opinions, with their education, from 
France. O'Connell spent a year at St. Omer, where 
the principal predicted that he would afterwards dis- 
tinguish himself, and he then remained for a few 
months at the English College of Douay. The Eevo- 
lution had at this time shattered the French Church 



ENTERS INTO POLITICS. 225 

and crown, and the minds of all men were violently 
agitated in its favour or against it. O'Connell's 
sympathies were strongly opposed to the movement. 
Like the members of most Irish families that had 
adhered to their religion during the penal laws, he was 
deeply attached to it, politically and through feelings 
of honour, if not from higher motives. Besides this, 
the associations of his college were necessarily clerical ; 
and some of the revolutionary soldiers, in passing 
through Douay, had heaped many insults on the 
students. On his return to Ireland he found that the 
contagion of the Revolution had already spread, and 
in the year '98, when he was called to the Bar, rebel- 
lion was raging over the country. He became a 
member of a yeomanry corps which the lawyers had 
formed, and was at that time, as he afterwards con- 
fessed, 'almost a Tory.' Though he retained to the 
last his antipathy to rebellion, his opinions in other 
respects were soon altered by the scandalous scenes of 
the State trials, by the spectacle of the condition of 
his co-religionists, and above all by the circumstances 
attending the Union. 

The Roman Catholics had made some inconsiderable 
efforts to influence public opinion by a society for the 
purpose of preparing petitions for Parliament, and of 
this society he early became a member. His extraordi- 
nary eloquence, his fertility of resources, his sagacity 
in reading characters and in discerning opportunities, 
his boundless and ever daring ambition, soon made him 
the life of this society, and outweighed all the advan- 
tages of rank and old services that were sometimes 
opposed to his views. There is much reason to believe 
that almost from the commencement of his career he 
formed one vast scheme of policy w^hich he pursued 
tbj^ough life with little deviation, and, it must be 



226 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

added, with little scruple. This scheme was to create 
and lead a public spirit among the Roman Catholics ; 
to wrest emancipation by this means from the Govern- 
ment; to perpetuate the agitation created for that 
purpose till the Irish Parliament had been restored ; 
to disendow the Established Church ; and thus to open 
in Ireland a new era, with a separate and independent 
Parliament and perfect religious equality. It would 
be difficult to conceive a scheme of policy exhibiting 
more daring than this. The Roman Catholics had 
hitherto shown themselves absolutely incompetent to 
take any decisive part in politics. They were not, it 
is true, quite as prostrate as they had been when Swift 
so contemptuously described them as being ' altogether 
as inconsiderable as the women and children, .... 
without leaders, without discipline, without natural 
courage, little better than hewers of wood and drawers 
of water, and out of all capacity of doing any mischief 
if they were ever so well inclined;' but yet the iron 
of the penal laws had entered into their souls, and 
they had always thrown themselves helplessly on Pro- 
testant leaders. Grattan, it is true, was now in the 
decline of life, but Plunket, who was still in the 
zenith of his great powers, was ready to succeed him. 
If the Roman Catholics could be braced up to inde- 
pendent exertion the noblemen and men of property in 
their ranks would be their natural leaders, and, at all 
events, a young lawyer, dependent on his talents and 
excluded from Parliament and from the higher ranks 
of his profession, would seem utterly unfitted for such 
a position. O'Connell, however, perceived that it was 
possible to bring the whole mass of the people into 
the struggle, and to give them an almost unexampled 
momentum and unanimity by applying to politics a 
great power that lay dormant in Ireland — the power of 



THE CATnOLIC miESTlIOOD. 227 

the Catholic priesthood. To make the priests the 
rulers of the country, and himself the ruler of the 
priests, was his first great object. 

Few things are more striking to those who compare 
the present condition of Ireland with her past than 
the rapidity with which the power of the priests has 
augmented during the present century. Formerly they 
were much loved by their flocks but much despised by 
the Protestants, and they were contented with keeping 
alive the spiritual feeling of their people without 
taking any conspicuous part in politics. Once or 
twice, indeed, the bishops came forward to disclaim 
certain doctrines that were attributed to their Church, 
and were advanced as an argument against emancipa- 
tion. Once or twice they held meetings to further the 
movement by expressing their willingness to concede 
something to procure the boon. If they had taken a 
certain part in ftivour of the Union, it was at the 
desire of the Ministers, and the position of O'Leary 
was solely due to the extreme beauty of his style. 

Strange as it may now appear, the priests seem to 
have been at one time most reluctant to enter into the 
political arena, and the whole agitation was frequently 
-in danger of perishing from very languor. There was 
a party supported by Keogh, the leader in '93, who 
recommended what was called ' a dignified silence ' — in 
other words, a complete abstinence from petitioning 
and agitation. With this party O'Connell successfully 
grappled. His advice on every occasion was, ' Agitate, 
agitate, agitate ! ' and Keogh was so irritated by the 
defeat that he retired from the society. But the 
greatest of the early triumphs of O'Connell was on the 
Veto question. It is evident that if the proposed com- 
promise were made, the policy he had laid out for himself 
would be completely frustrated. A public spirit would 



228 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

not be formed among the Roman Catholics by a pro- 
tracted struggle. Emancipation would be a boon that 
was conceded, not a triumph that was won ; and the 
episcopacy would be in a measure dependent upon the 
Crown. In the course of the contest almost every 
element of power seemed against him. The bishops, 
both in 1799 and in 1808, had declared themselves in 
favour of the veto. The English Roman Catholics led 
by Mr. Butler, the upper order of those of Ireland led 
by Lord Fingall, and the Protestant Liberals led by 
Grattan, warmly supported it. Shell, who was tho- 
roughly identified with the democratic party, and whose 
Avonderful rhetorical powers gave him an extraor- 
dinary influence, wrote and spoke in favour of com- 
promise ; and, to cro^vn all, Monsignor Quarantotti, 
who in a great measure managed affairs at Rome during 
the captivity of Pius VII., exhorted the bishops to 
accept it. Over all these obstacles O'Connell triumphed. 
He succeeded in persuading or forcing the bishops 
into violent opposition to the scheme, and in throwing 
them on the support of the people. Dr. Milner wrote 
against the veto, and was accordingly censured by the 
English Roman Catholics ; but O'Connell induced those 
of Ireland to support him. Grattan refused to place, 
himself in the hands of the Catholic committee, and 
the petition was immediately taken out of his hands. 
Lord Fingall, Sir E. Bellew, and a few other leading 
Catholics, would not yield, and were obliged to form a 
separate society, which soon sank into insignificance. 
Shell was answered by O'Connell, and the answer was 
accepted by the people as conclusive ; and, finally, the 
rescript of Quarantotti was disobeyed by the bishops 
and disavowed by the Pope. The results of the con- 
troversy were probably by no means beneficial to the 
country, but they at least served in an eminent degree 



EARLY REPEAL MOVEMENTS. 229 

the purposes of the agitator. The clergy were brought 
actively into politics. The lower orders were stirred 
to the very depths, and O'Connell was triumphant over 
all rivals. 

In the course of this controversy it was frequently 
urged that O'Connell's policy retarded emancipation. 
This objection he met with characteristic frankness. 
He avowed himself repeatedly to be an agitator with 
an ' ulterior object,' and declared that that object was 
the repeal of the Union. ' Desiring, as I do, the repeal 
of the Union,' he said in one of his speeches, in 1813, 
' I rejoice to see how our enemies promote that great 
object. Yes, they promote its inevitable success by 
their very hostility to Ireland. They delay the liberties 
of the Catholics, but they compensate us most amply 
because they advance the restoration of Ireland. By 
leaving one cause of agitation, they have created, and 
they will embody and give shape and form to, a public 
mind and a public spirit.' In 1811, at a political 
dinner, he spoke to the toast of Eepeal, which had 
been given at his suggestion, and he repeatedly re- 
verted to the subject. Nothing can be more untrue 
than to represent the Eepeal agitation as a mere after- 
thought designed to sustain his flagging popularity. 
Nor can it be said that the project was first started by 
him. The deep indignation that the Union had produced 
in Ireland was fermenting among all classes, and assum- 
ing the form, sometimes of a French party, sometimes of 
a social war, and sometimes of a constitutional agitation. 
The Eepeal agitation directed, but did not create, the 
national feeling. It merely gave it a distinct form, a 
steady action, and a constitutional character. In 1810 
a very remarkable movement in this direction took place 
in Dublin. The grand jury passed a resolution declar- 
ing that ' the Union had produced an accumulation 



230 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of distress ; and that, instead of cementing, they 
feared that if not repealed it might endanger the con- 
nection between the sister countries.' In the same year 
a meeting communicated on the subject with Grattan, 
who was member for the city. Grattan replied that a 
Eepeal agitation could only be successful if supported 
by the people ; that if that support were given, he 
would be ready to advocate the movement ; and that 
he considered such a course perfectly consonant with 
devoted attachment to the connection.' Lord Clon- 
curry relates that he was a member of a deputation 
which on another occasion waited on Grattan, and that 
Grattan said to them, ' Gentlemen, the best advice I 
can give my fellow-citizens upon every occasion is to 
keep knocking at the Union.' 

The prominent position O'Connell had assumed in 
politics natui-ally exercised a favourable influence upon 
his professional career, so that he became by far the 
most popular counsel in Ireland, and was invariably 
employed in all those cases which involved political 

' Grattan's letter is so remarkable that I give it in full. It will be 
found in his Life, by his son : 

' Gentlemen, — I had the honour to receive an address, presented by 
your committee, and expressive of their wishes that I should present 
certain petitions and support the repeal of an Act entitled the " Act of 
Union," and your committee adds, that it speaks with the authority of 
my constituents, the freemen and freeholders of the City of Dublin, I 
beg to assure your committee, and through them my much beloved and 
much respected constituents, that I shall accede to their proposition. 
I shall present their petitions and sujjport the repeal of the Act of 
Union with a decided attachment to our connection with Great Britain, 
and to that harmony between the two countries, without which the 
connection cannot last. I do net impair either, as I apprehend, when 
I assure you that I shall support the repeal of the Act of Union. You 
will please to observe that a proposition of that sort in Parliament, to 
bo either prudent or possible, must wait until it should be called for 
and backed by the nation. When proposed, I shall then, as at all 
other times I hope I shall, prove myself an Irishman, and that Irishman 
whose first and last passion was his native country.' 



SUCCESS AT THE BAE. 231 

or religious considerations. There have been a few 
lawyers of deeper knowledge, and even of more power- 
ful eloquence, though he ranked extremely high in 
both respects ; but never, perhaps, was there a man 
more admirably calculated to excel at the Irish Bar. 
His unrivalled knowledge of the Irish character; his 
sagacity in detecting the weaknesses of the judges, 
jurymen, and witnesses ; the wonderful dexterity with 
which he could avail himself of any legal quibble or 
ambiguity; and the unblushing audacity with which he 
could confront any opponent, enabled him quickly to 
distance all competitors. It is difficult for those who 
are habituated only to the law-courts of England to 
conceive the vast difference in this respect between the 
two countries. The difference of the characters of the 
two nations is nowhere more apparent, and, besides 
this, the proceedings of the Irish law-courts have ever 
been deeply tinged with religious and jDolitical con- 
siderations. In appointments of judges and of law- 
officers the first question asked by the public seems 
to be their religion, the second their politics, the 
last their legal knowledge ; and the scandal of mere 
party judges has been both more frequent and more 
recent in Ireland than in England. Besides this, 
an unusual proportion of the leading politicians of 
Ireland have been practising barristers, and the temp- 
tation of making a trial on a question of tithes, or 
tenant-right, or libel, an occasion for a brilliant display, 
was irresistible both to the politician and to the orator. 
As trials of this nature were continually occurring, and 
as their exclusion from the inner bar and from the 
bench gave the Eoman Catholics a tenfold virulence, 
the scenes which took place at the Four Courts during 
the earlier part of the century may be more easily 
conceived than described. O'Connell always defended 



232 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the excessive violence of his language, both at the Bar 
and on the platform, on the ground of the peculiar 
position of the Eoman Catholics. He said that he had 
found his co-religionists as broken in spirit as they 
were in fortune ; that they had adopted the tone of 
the weakest mendicants ; that they seemed ever fearful 
of wearying the dominant caste by their importunity, 
and that they were utterly unmindful of their power 
and of their rights. His most difficult task was to 
persuade them of their strength, and to teach them 
to regard themselves as the equals of their fellow- 
countrymen. The easiest way of breaking the spell 
was to adopt a defiant and an overbearing tone. The 
spectacle of a Roman Catholic fearlessly assailing the 
highest in the land with the fiercest invective and the 
most unceremonious ridicule, was eminently calculated 
to invigorate a cowering people. A tone of extreme 
violence was the best corrective for a spirit of extreme 
servility. 

There is undoubtedly some truth in these considera- 
tions, and they extenuate not a little the language 
of O'Connell; but they are certainly far from justi- 
fying it, either morally or politically. The ceaseless 
torrent of the coarsest abuse which at every period 
of his life, and in every sphere in which he moved, he 
poured upon all opponents ; the rapidity with which he 
passed, on a very small provocation, from a tone of the 
most hyperbolical praise to language that was worthy 
of Billingsgate ; and the virulence with which he 
attacked some of the most illustrious characters in the 
country, prejudiced all moderate men against him. It 
Avas said of him that his mind consisted of two com- 
partments — the one inhabited by the purest angels, and 
the other by the vilest demons — and that the occupation 
of his life was to transfer his friends from the one to 



HIS VIOLENT LANGUAGE. 233 

the other. A man who did not hesitate to describe the 
Duke of Wellington as ' a stunted corporal,' and who 
applied to other opponents such terms as ' a mighty 
big liar,' or 'a lineal descendant of the impenitent 
thief,' or 'a titled buffoon,' or 'a contumelious cur,' 
or ' a pig,' or ' a scorpion,' or ' an indescribable wretch,' 
placed himself beyond the pale of courtesy. The abuse 
he at one period of his life poured upon the Whigs 
embarrassed him during all the later part of his career, 
and he drew down upon himself the formal reprimand 
of the House of Commons by accusing the Tory mem- 
bers on election committees of ' foul perjury.' Such 
language could hardly fail to lower the character of 
the movement, and it especially weakened his position 
when he became a member of Parliament. That tone 
of gentlemanly moderation, that well-bred, pungent 
raillery which is so characteristic of the English Par- 
liament, and has been brought to the greatest perfec- 
tion by Lord Palmerston, has often proved a more 
efficient weapon of debate than the most splendid 
eloquence or the most trenchant wit. It draws a magic 
circle around the speaker, which only similar weapons 
can penetrate, and it seldom fails to secure the atten- 
tion and the respect of the public. 

The greatest speeches of O'Connell at the Bar were 
in defence of Magee, the editor of the ' Evening Post,' 
who had libelled the Duke of Eichmond. They consist 
chiefly of an invective against Saurin, the Attorney- 
General, as the representative of the Orange party, and 
were so violent that the publication of one of them 
was pronounced to be an aggravation of the original 
libel. In point of eloquence, however, they rank very 
high ; but they are almost exclusively political, for the 
case of his client was a hopeless one. The principal 
success of O'Connell at the Bar was, perhaps, not in 



234 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

oratory, but in cross-examining. He had paid special 
attention to this department, which naturally fell, in a 
great measure, to the Roman Catholic lawyers at a 
time when they were excluded from the inner bar ; and 
he brought it to a degree of perfection almost unpa- 
ralleled in Ireland. His wonderful insight into cha- 
racter, and tact in managing different temperaments, 
enabled him to unravel the intricacies of deceit with 
a rapidity and a certainty that seemed miraculous, and 
his biographies are full of almost incredible illustra- 
tions of his skill. ^ 

It would be tedious to follow into minute detail the 
difficulties and the mistakes that obstructed the Catho- 
lic movement, and were finally overcome by the energy 
or the tact of O'Connell. For some time the gravest 
fears were entertained that the Pope would pronounce 
in favour of the veto. A strong party at Rome, headed 
by Cardinal Gronsalvi, was known to advocate it, and 
the deputy of the Irish bishops adopted so importunate 
a tone that he was peremptorily dismissed, and pro- 
nounced by his Holiness to be 'intolerable.' Innu- 
merable dissensions dislocated the movement, and 
demanded all the efforts of O'Connell to appease them. 
When the Roman Catholic gentry had seceded, a mul- 
titude of those eccentric characters who are ever ready 
to embark in agitation from the mere spirit of adven- 
ture assumed a dangerous prominence, and it was 
found necessary to adopt a most despotic tone to repress 
them. The hopes that were entertained of the Prince 
of Wales produced a great deal of gross and vulgar 
flattery, and in 1812, when the change in his senti- 
ments became known, some most injudicious resolutions, 
ascribing it to 'the fatal witchery of an unworthy 

' See especially Mr. O'Neil Daunt's very interesting ' Personal Ee- 
collections of Connell,' 



AGITATION FOR EMANCIPATION. 235 

secret influence.' When be visited Ireland after his 
coronation, the unbounded sycophancy of some of the 
Orangemen on one side, and of O'Connell on the other, 
went far to justify the somewhat strange saying of Swift, 
that ' loyalty is the foible of the Irish.' Lord Byron, 
who took a strong interest in the Catholic cause, which 
he defended in the House of Lords, was justly indig- 
nant, and branded the conduct of O'Connell with great 
severity in the ' Irish Avatar.' 

In 1815 O'Connell fought a duel with a gentleman 
named D'Esterre, which was attended by some very 
painful circumstances, and gave rise to much subse- 
quent discussion. It arose out of the epithet ' beggarly' 
which O'Connell had applied to the corporation of 
Dublin. D'Esterre was killed at the first shot. In the 
same year Mr. Peel had challenged O'Connell, on 
account of some violent expressions he had employed. 
O'Connell, however, was very opportunely arrested at 
his wife's information, and bound over to keep the 
peace. 

Several times the movement was menaced by Govern- 
ment proclamations and prosecutions. Its great diffi- 
culty was to bring the public opinion of the whole 
body of the Eoman Catholics actively and habitually 
into the question. The skill and activity of O'Connell 
in arousing the people were beyond all praise, and 
the consciousness of the presence of a great leader be- 
gan to spread through the whole mass of the ignorant, 
dispirited, and dependent Catholics. All preceding 
movements since the Eevolution (except the passing 
excitement about Wood's halfpence) had been chiefly 
among the Protestants or among the higher order of 
the Catholics. The mass of the people had taken no 
real interest in politics, had felt no real pain at their 
disabilities, and were politically the willing slaves 



236 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of their landlords. For the first time, under the 
influence of O'Connell, the great swell of a really de- 
mocratic movement was felt. The simplest way of 
concentrating the new enthusiasm would have been by 
a system of delegates, but this had been rendered ille- 
gal by tlie Convention Act. On the other hand, the 
right of petitioning was one of the fundamental privi- 
leges of the constitution. By availing himself of this 
right O'Connell contrived, with the dexterity of a prac- 
tised lawyer, to violate continually the spirit of the 
Convention Act, while keeping within the letter of the 
law. Proclamation after proclamation was launched 
against his society, but by contiiiually changing its 
name and its form he generally succeeded in evading 
the prosecutions of the Government. 

These early societies, however, all sink into insigni- 
ficance compared with that great Catholic Association 
which was formed in 1824. The avowed objects of this 
society were to promote religious education, to ascer- 
tain the numerical strength of the different religions, 
and to answer the charges against the Eoman Catholics 
embodied in the hostile petitions. It also recommended 
petitions (unconnected with the society) from every 
parisli, and aggregate meetings in every coimty. The 
real object was to form a gigantic system of organisa- 
tion, ramifying over the entire country, and directed in 
every parish by the priests, for the pm-pose of peti- 
tioning and in every other way agitating in favour of 
emancipation. The Catholic Eent was instituted at 
this time, and it formed at once a powerful instrument 
of cohesion and a faithful barometer of the popular 
feeling. It is curious that at the first two meetings 
O'Connell was unable to obtain the attendance of ten 
members to form a quorum. On the third day the 
same difficulty at first occurred, but O'Connell at length 



SHEIL. 237 

induced two Maynooth students who were passing to 
make up the requisite number, and the introduction of 
this clerical element set the machine in motion. Very 
soon, however, the importance of the new society 
became manifest. Almost the whole priesthood of 
Ireland were actively engaged in its service, and it 
threatened to overawe every other authority in the 
land. In the elections of 1826 sacerdotal influence 
was profoundly felt ; and the defeat of the Beresfords 
in the Catholic county of Waterford, in which, in spite 
of their violent anti-Catholicism, they had for genera- 
tions been supreme, foreshadowed clearly the coming 
change. The people were organised with unprece- 
dented rapidity, and O'Connell and Shell traversed the 
country in all directions to address them. 

Though both were marvellously successful in swaying 
and in fascinating the multitude, it would be difficult 
to conceive a greater contrast than was presented by 
their styles. 

I Eichard Lalor Shell forms one of the many exam- 
ples of splendid oratorical powers clogged by insu- 
perable natural defects. His person was diminutive, 
and wholly devoid of dignity ; his voice shrill, harsh, 
and often rising into a positive shriek ; his action, 
though indicative of an intense earnestness, violent 
without gracefulness, and eccentric even to absurdity. 
He had distinguished himself as a poet and a dramatist ; 
and it was, perhaps, in consequence of the habits he 
acquired in those fields that his speeches, though 
extremely beautiful as compositions, were always a 
little overcharged with ornament, and a little too care- 
fully elaborated. They seem exactly to fulfil Burke's 
description of perfect oratory, ' half poetry, half prose ; ' 
yet we feel that their ornaments, however beautiful in 
themselves, offend by their profusion. Two very high 



238 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



1 



excellences he possessed to a pre-eminent degree — the 
power of combining extreme jjreparation with the 
greatest passion, and of blending argument with decla- 
mation. There are very few speakers from whom it 
woidd be possible to cite so many passages with all the 
sustained rhythm and flow of declamation, yet consist- 
ing wholly of condensed arguments. He was a great 
master of irony, and, unlike O'Connell, could adapt it 
either to a vulgar or to a refined audience. He had 
but little readiness, and almost always prepared the 
language as well as the substance of his speeches ; but 
he seems to have carefully followed the example of 
Cicero in studying the case of his opponents as fully as 
his own, and was thus enabled to anticipate with great 
accuracy the course of the debate. He was more cal- 
culated to please than to move, and to dazzle than to 
convince. 

In almost every respect O'Connell differed from Sheil. 
Had he been a man of second-rate talent, he would 
have imitated some of the great orators who adorned 
the Irish Parliament ; he would have studied epigram 
like Grattan, or irony like Plunket, or polished decla- 
mation like Curran. He seems, however, to have early 
felt that neither the character of his mind nor the 
career he had chosen were propitious for these forms of 
eloquence, while he was eminently fitted to excel in 
other ways. He possessed a voice of almost unexampled 
perfection. Kising with an easy and melodious swell, 
it filled the largest building and triumphed over the 
wildest tumult, while at the same time it conveyed 
every inflection of feeling with the most delicate flexi- 
bility. It was equally suited for impassioned appeal, 
for graphic narration, and for sweeping the finer chords 
of pathos and of sensibility. He had studied carefully 
that consummate master of elocution William Pitt, 



ms ELOQUENCE. 239 

and he had acquired an almost equal skill. No one 
knew better how to pass from impetuous denunciation 
to a tone of subdued but thrilling tenderness. No one 
quoted poetry with greater feeling and effect ; no one 
had more completely mastered the art of adapting his 
voice to his audience, and of terminating a long 
sentence without efifort and without feebleness. His 
action was so easy, natural, and suited to his subject, 
that it almost escaped the notice of the observer. His 
language was clear, nervous, and fluent, but often in- 
correct, and scarcely ever polished. Having but little 
of the pride of a rhetorician, he subordinated strictly 
all other considerations to the end he was seeking to 
achieve, and readily sacrificed every grace of style 
in order to produce an immediate effect. ' A great 
speech,' he used to say, is a very fine thing ; but, after 
all, the verdict is the thing.' As Shell complained, 
' he often threw out a brood of sturdy young ideas 
upon the world without a rag to cover them.' He had 
no dread of vulgar expressions, coarse humour, or un- 
dignified illustrations ; but at the same time he seldom 
failed to make a visible impression ; for, in addition to 
the intrinsic power of his eloquence, he possessed in 
the highest degree the tact which detects the weak- 
nesses and prejudices of his audience and the skill 
which adapts itself to their moods. His readiness in 
reply was boundless, his argmnents were stated with 
masterly force, and his narrative was always lucid 
and vivid. If he endeavoured to become eloquent by 
preparation, he grew turgid and bombastic ; if he relied 
exclusively on the feelings of the moment, he often 
rose to a strain of masculine beauty that was all the 
more forcible from its being evidently unprepared. 
His bursts of passion displayed that freshness and 
genuine character that art can so seldom counterfeit. 



240 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

The listener seemed almost to follow the workings of 
his mind — to perceive him hewing his thoughts into 
rhetoric with a negligent but colossal grandeiu: ; with 
the chisel, not of a Canova, but of a Michael Angelo. 
Were we to analyse the pleasure we derive from the 
speeches of a brilliant orator, we should probably find 
that one great source is this constant perception of an 
ever-recurring difficulty skilfidly overcome. With some 
speakers appropriate language flows forth in such a 
rapid and unbroken stream th.it the charm of art is 
lost by its very perfection. With others the difficulties of 
expression are so painfully exhibited or so imperfectly 
overcome that we listen with feelings of apprehension 
and of pity. But when the happy medium is attained — 
when the idea that is to be conveyed is present for a 
moment to the listener's thought before it is moulded 
into the stately period — the music of each balanced 
sentence acquires an additional charm from our per- 
ception of the labour that produced it. In addressing 
the populace the great talents of O'Connell shone forth 
with their full resplendency. Such an audience alone 
is susceptible of the intense feelings the orator seeks 
to convey, and over such an audience O'Connell exer- 
cised an unbounded influence. Tens of thousands 
hung entranced upon his accents, melted into tears or 
convulsed with laughter — fired with the most impas- 
sioned and indignant enthusiasm, yet so restrained 
that not an act of riot or of lawlessness, not a scene of 
drunkenness or of disorder, resulted from those vast 
assemblies. His genius was moi-e wonderful in con- 
trolling than in exciting, and there was no chord of 
feeling that he could not strike with power. Other 
orators studied rhetoric — O'Connell studied man. 

If we compare the two speakers, I should say that 
before an uneducated audience O'Connell was wholly 



PROGRESS OF THE ASSOCIATION. 241 

unrivalled, while before an educated audience Sheil 
was most fitted to please and O'Connell to convince. 
Both were powerful rcasoners, but the arguments of 
O'Connell stood in bold and clear relief, while the 
attention was somewhat diverted from those of Sheil 
b}' the ornaments and mannerism that accompanied 
them. Both possessed great powers of ridicule, but in 
O'Connell it assumed the form of coarse but genuine 
humour, and in Sheil of refined and pungent wit. By 
too great preparation Sheil's speeches displayed some- 
times an excess of brilliancy. By elaborate preparation 
O'Connell occasionally fell into bombast. O'Connell was 
much the greater debater, Sheil was much the greater 
master of composition. O'Connell possessed the more 
vigorous intellect, and Sheil the more correct taste. 

The success of the Catholic Association became 
every week more striking. The I'ent rose with an 
extraordinary rapidity. The meetings in every county 
grew more and more enthusiastic, the triumph of 
priestly influence more and more certain. The Grovern- 
ment made a feeble and abortive effort to arrest the 
storm by threatening both O'Connell and Sheil with 
prosecution for certain passages in their speeches. 
The sentence cited from O'Connell was one in which 
he expressed a hope that ' if Ireland were driven 
mad by persecution a new Bolivar might arise,' but 
the employment of this language was not clearly esta- 
blished, and the Bill was thrown out. The speech 
which was to have drawn a prosecution upon Sheil was 
a kind of dissertation upon ' Wolfe Tone's Memoirs,' 
of which Canning afterwards said that it might have 
been delivered in Parliament without even eliciting a 
call to order, The Attorney-General was Plunket, 
who by this act completed the destruction of his 
influenge in Ireland. Sheil asked him, as a single 
12 



242 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

favour, to conduct the prosecution in person. Had 
he done so, Sheil intended to cite the passages from 
Plunkefs speeches on the Union, which at least equalled 
in violence any that the Eepealers ever delivered. The 
dissolution of the Government prevented the intended 
prosecution. 

One very serious consequence of the resistance to the 
demand for emancipation was the strengthening of the 
sympathy between Ireland and France. The French 
education of many of the Irish priests, and the pro- 
minent position of France among Eoman Catholic 
nations, had naturally elicited and sustained it. The 
sagacity of O'Connell readily perceived what a powerful 
avixiliary foreign opinion would be to his cause ; and 
by sending the resolutions of the association to Catholic 
Grovernments, by translations of the debates, and by a 
series of French letters written by Sheil, the feeling 
was constantly fanned. Many Irishmen have believed 
that the existence of this sympathy is an evil. I 
confess I can hardly think so. Irishmen should never 
forget how, in the hour of their deepest distress, when 
their energies were paralysed by a persecuting code, 
and their land was wasted by confiscation and war, 
France opened her ranks to receive them, and afforded 
them the opportunities of honour and distinction they 
were denied at home. Gratitude to the French nation 
is a sentiment in which both Irish Catholics and Irish 
Protestants may cordially concur. The first will ever 
look back with pride to the achievements of the Irish 
brigade, which threw a ray of light over the gloomiest 
period of their depression. The second should not 
wholly forget that to the enterprise of French refugees 
is due a large part of the manufactures which consti- 
tute a main element of their prosperity. Nor is it 
possible for any patriotic Irighwan to contrast without 



FRENCH SYMPATHIES. 243 

emotion the tone which has been adopted towards his 
country by some of the most eminent writers of France 
with the studied depreciation of the Irish character by 
some of the most popular authors and by a large 
section of the press of England. The character of a 
nation is its most precious possession, and it is to such 
writers as Montalembert and Gustave de Beaumont 
that it is mainly due that Ireland has still many 
sympathisers on the Continent. 

But in addition to these considerations there are 
others of much weight that may be alleged. One 
of the most important intellectual advantages of 
Catholicism is, that the constant international commu- 
nication it produces corrects insular modes of thought, 
and it has been of no small benefit to Irishmen that 
they have never been altogether without some tincture 
of French culture. In the worst period of the last 
centuiy this was secured by the French education of 
the priests ; and, in spite of geographical position 
and of penal laws, a certain current of continental 
ideas has always been perceptible among the people. 
The spirit of French Catholicism long gave a larger 
and more liberal character to Irish Catholicism, and in 
French literature Irish writers have found the supreme 
models of a type of excellence which is peculiarly 
congruous to the national mind. There have sometimes 
been political dangei's arising from the sympathy be- 
tween the nations ; but on the whole it has, I believe, 
produced far more good than evil. 

The formation of the Wellington Ministry seemed 
effectually to crush the present hopes of the Catholics, 
for the stubborn resolution of its leader was as well 
known as his Tory opinions. Yet this Ministry was 
destined to terminate the contest by establishing 
the principle of religious equality. The first great 



244 DANIEL OCONNELL. 

concession was won by Lord J. Eussell, wlio, by obtain- 
ing the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, secured 
the admission of Dissenters to the full privileges of 
the constitution. The Tory theory that the State 
having an established religion, the members of that re- 
ligion had aright to a position of political ascendency, 
was thus for the first time rejected, and with it fell 
the most popular argument against Catholic emanci- 
pation. O'Connell and the Catholics warmly sup- 
ported the Dissenters in their struggle for emanci- 
pation, but the 'No Popery' feeling among the latter 
was so strong that they never reciprocated the assist- 
ance. Even at a time when they were themselves 
suffering from disabling laws, they were in general 
hostile to Catholic emancipation. 

About this time a new project of compromise was 
much discussed, both in Parliament and by the public, 
which shows clearly how greatly the prospects of the 
cause had improved. This project was, that the eman- 
cipation should be accompanied by the payment of the 
clergy by the State, and by the disfranchisement of 
the 40s. freeholders. It seems to have been very 
generally felt that while emancipation could not be 
long delayed, some measure should be taken to prevent 
the Eoman Catholic body from being virtually inde- 
pendent of the Crown. It was felt that a body which 
was connected by interests, by sympathies and alle- 
giance, with a foreign Court, might become very 
dangerous in Parliament. To pay the Roman Catholic 
clergy woiild be to unite them by a strong tie to 
England, and to place them in a measure under the 
control of the Government. It would also, in all 
probability, set at rest the long-vexed question of 
the Established Church. Pitt had contemplated the 
measure, and it found many very able advocates in 



THE CLARE ELECTION. 245 

England. O'Connell at iirst thought that the clergy 
shonld demand this arrangement ; but, on their vehe- 
ment opposition, he renounced the idea. In 1837 
he had a warm controversy on the subject with Mr. 
Smith O'Brien, who advocated payment. Each was 
probably right, according to his OAvn point of view. 
Mr. O'Brien looked mainly to the interests of his 
country — O'Connell to the interests of his Church. 
To pay the priests would have been, in a great measure, 
to pacify Ireland, but they would have been less 
powerful than when resting exclusively on the people, 
and they have always cared much more for power than 
for money. 

On the accession of tlie Wellington Ministry to 
power the Catholic Association passed a resolution to 
the effect that they would oppose with their whole 
energy any Irish member who consented to accept 
office under it. When the Test and Corporation Acts 
were repealed, Lord John Eussell advised the with- 
drawal of this resolution, and O'Connell, who, at that 
time, usually acted as moderatoi', was inclined to 
comply. Fortunately, however, his opinion was over- 
ruled. An opportunity for carrying the resolution 
into effect soon occurred. Mr. Fitzgerald, the member 
for Clare, accepted the office of President of the Board 
of Trade, and was consequently obliged to go to his 
constituents for re-election. An attempt was made 
to induce a Major Macnamara to oppose him, but it 
failed at the last moment, and then O'Connell adopted 
the bold resolution of standing himself. The excite- 
ment at this announcement rose at once to fever 
height. It extended over every part of Ireland, and 
penetrated every class of society. The whole mass of 
the Eoman Catholics prepared to support him, and 
the vast system of organisation which he had framed 



246 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

acted effectually in every direction. He went down 
to the field of battle, accompanied by Shell, by the 
well-known controversialist Father Maguire, and by 
Steele and O'Gorman Mahon, two very ardent but 
eccentric Eepealers, who proposed and seconded him. 
Mr. Steele began operations by offering to fight a 
duel with any landlord who was aggrieved at the 
interference with his tenants — a characteristic but 
judicious proceeding, which greatly simplified the con- 
test. O'Connell, Shell, and Father Maguire flew over 
the country, harangviing the people. The priests ad- 
dressed the parishioners with impassioned zeal from 
the altar ; they called on them, as they valued their 
immortal souls, as they would avoid the doom of the 
apostate and the renegade, to stand firm to the banner 
of their faith. Robed in the sacred vestments, and 
bearing aloft the image of God, they passed from 
rank to rank, stimulating the apathetic, encouraging 
the fainthearted, and imprecating curses on the re- 
creant. They breathed the martyr-spirit into their 
people, and persuaded them that their cause was as 
sacred as that of the early Christians. They opposed 
the spell of religion to the spell of feudalism — the 
traditions of the chapel to the traditions of the 
hall. 

The landlords, on the other hand, were equally 
resolute. They were indignant at a body of men who 
had no connection with the county presuming to 
dictate to their tenants. They protested vehemently 
against the introduction of spiritual influence into a 
political election, and against the ingratitude mani- 
fested towards a tried and upright member. Mr. Fitz- 
gerald had always been a supporter of the Catholic 
cause. He was an accomplished speaker, a man of 
unquestioned integrity, and of most fascinating and 



THE CLARE ELECTION. 247 

polished manners. His father who was at this time 
lying on his death-bed — had been one of those members 
of the Irish Parliament who had resisted all the offers 
and all the persviasions of the Ministry, and had 
recorded their votes against the Union, The land- 
lords were to a man in his favour. Sir Edward 
O'Brien, the father of Mr. Smith O'Brien, and the 
leading landlord, proposed him, and almost all the 
men of weight and reputation in the county sur- 
rounded him on the hustings. Nor did he prove un- 
worthy of the contest. His speech was a model of 
good taste, of popular reasoning, and of touching 
appeal. He recounted his services and the services of 
his father ; and, as he touched with delicate pathos on 
this latter subject, his voice faltered and his coun- 
tenance betrayed so genuine an emotion that a kindred 
feeling passed through all his hearers, and he closed 
his speech amidst almost unanimous applause. The 
effect was, however, soon counteracted by O'Connell, 
who exerted himself to the utmost on the occasion, 
and withheld no invective and no sarcasm that could 
subserve his cause. After two or three days' polling 
the victory was decided, and Mr. Fitzgerald withdrew 
from the contest. 

Ireland was now on the very verge of revolution. 
The whole mass of the people had been organised like 
a regular army, and taught to act with the most 
perfect unanimity. Adopting a suggestion of Shell, 
they were accustomed to assemble in every jDart of 
the country on the same day, and scarcely an adult 
Catholic abstained from the movement. In 1828 it 
was computed that in a single day two thousand meet- 
ings were held. In the same year Lord Anglesey had 
written to Sir Robert Peel, stating that the priests 
were working most effectually on the Catholics of the 



248 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

army, that it was reported that many of these were 
ill-disposed, and that it was important to remove the 
depots of recruits, and supply their place by English 
or Scotch men. The contagion of the movement had 
thoroughly infected the whole population. If conces- 
sion had not been made, almost every Catholic county 
would have followed the example of Clare ; and the 
Ministers, feeling further resistance to be hopeless, 
brought in the Emancipation Bill, confessedly because 
to withhold it would be to kindle a rebellion that 
would extend over the length and breadth of the 
land. 

It was thus that this great victory was won by the 
genius of a single man, who had entered on the con- 
test without any advantage of rank, or wealth, or 
influence, who had maintained it from no prouder 
eminence than the platform of the demagogue, and 
who terminated it without the effusion of a single 
drop of blood. All the eloquence of Grattan and of 
Plunket, all the influence of Pitt and of Canning, had 
proved ineffectual. Toryism had evoked the spirit of 
religious intolerance. The pulpits of England resounded 
with denunciations ; the Evangelical movement had 
roused the fierce passions of Puritanism; yet every 
obstacle succumbed before the energy of this untitled 
lawyer. The most eminent advocates of emancipation 
had almost all fallen away from and disavowed him. 
He had devised the organisation that gave such weight 
to public opinion ; he had created the enthusiasm that 
inspired it ; he had applied to political affairs the 
priestly influence that consecrated it. With the ex- 
ception of Sheil, no man of commanding talent shared 
his labours, and Sheil was conspicuous only as a rhe- 
torician. He gained this victory not by stinaulating 
the courao-e or increasing the number of the advocates 



THE IRISH LANDLORDS. 249 

of the measure in Parliament, but by creating another 
system of government in Ireland, which overawed all 
his opponents. He gained it at a time when his 
bitterest enemies held the reins of power, and when 
they were guided by tlie most successful statesman of 
his generation, and by one of the most stubborn wills 
that ever directed the affairs of tho nation. If he 
had never arisen, emancipation would doubtless have 
been at length conceded, but it would have been con- 
ceded as a boon granted by a superior to an inferior 
class, and it would have been accompanied and quali- 
fied l)y the veto. It was the glory of O'Connell that 
his Church entered into the constitution triumphant 
and unshackled — an object of fear and not of contempt 
— a power that could visibly affect the policy of the 
empire. 

The Relief Bill of 1829 marks a great social revolu- 
tion in Ireland — the substitution of the priests for the 
landlords as the leaders of the people. For a long 
time a kind of feudal system had existed, under which 
the people were drawn in the closest manner to the 
landlords. In estimating the character of this latter 
class we must, I think, make very large allowance for 
the singularly unfavourable circumstances under which 
they had long been placed. The Irish Parliament was 
governed chiefly by corruption, and as the landlords 
controlled most of the votes, and as the county dignities 
to which they aspired were all in the gift of the 
Government, they were, beyond all other classes, ex- 
posed to temptation. They were also subject to much 
the same kind of demoralising process as that which 
in slave coimtries invariably degrades the slave-owner. 
The estate of the Protestant landowner had in very 
many cases been torn by violence from its former 
possessors. He held it by the tenure and in the spirit 



250 DANIEL o'co:nnell. 

of a conqueror. His tenants were of a conquered race, 
of a despised religion, speaking another language, de- 
nuded of all political rights, sunk in abject ignorance 
and poverty, and with no leader under whom they 
could rally. Surrounded with helots depending abso- 
lutely on his will, it was not surprising that he con- 
tracted the vices of a despot. Arthur Young concludes 
a vivid description of the relation between the classes 
by the assertion that ' a landlord in Ireland can scarcely 
invent an order which a servant, or labourer, or cot- 
tier dares to refuse to execute ; ' and the total absence of 
independence on the part of the lower orders, and the 
general tolerance of brutal violence on the part of the 
higher orders, struck most Englishmen in Ireland. 
Besides this, the penal laws which gave the whole 
estate of tlie Catholic to any son who would consent to 
abjure his religion, seemed ingeniously contrived to 
secure a perpetual influx of unprincipled men into the 
landlord class ; while the vast smuggling trade which 
necessarily followed the arbitrary and ruinous pro- 
hibition of the export of wool, conspired with other 
causes to make the landlords, like all other Irishmen, 
hostile to the law. The glimpses which are given 
incidentally of their mode of life by Swift, Berkeley, 
Chesterfield, and Dobbs, and at a later period by Arthur 
Young, are in many respects exceedingly unfavourable. 
The point of honour in Ireland has always been rather 
in favour of improvidence than of economy. In dress 
and living a scale of reckless expenditure was common, 
which impelled the landlords to rackrents and invasions 
of the common land, and these in their turn produced 
the agrarian troubles of the ' Whiteboys ' and ' Hearts 
of Steel.' Hard drinking was carried to a much greater 
extent than in England, and both Berkeley and Chester- 
field have noticed the extraordinary consumption of 



THE imSII LANDLORDS. 251 

French wines, even in families of very moderate means. 
The character of the whole landed interest is always 
profoundly influenced by that of its natural leaders, 
the aristocracy and the magistracy ; but in Ireland 
peerages were systematically conferred as a means of 
corruption, and the appointments to the magistracy 
were so essentially political that even in the present 
century landlords have been refused the dignity because 
they were favourable to Catholic emancipation.' A 
spirit of reckless place-hunting and jobbing was very 
prevalent, and combined curiously with that extreme 
lawlessness which was the characteristic of every section 
of Irish society. Duelling was almost universal, and 
it was carried largely into politics, and even into the 
administration of j ustice ; for a magistrate who gave a 
decision in favour of a tenant against his landlord was 
liable to be called out, and by the same process land- 
lords are said to have defended their own tenants 
against prosecution. No Irish jury, Arthur Yovmg 
assures us, would in duelling cases find a verdict 
against the homicide. It was a common boast that 
there were whole districts in which the King's writ 
was inoperative. In the early part of the eighteenth 
century ' hell-fire clubs,' which were scenes of gross 
vice, existed in Dublin, and the crime of forcible ab- 
duction was, through nearly the whole of the eighteenth 
century, probably more common in Ireland than in 
any other European country, and it prevailed both 
among the gentry and among the peasants. It is 
worthy of notice that Arthur Young observed in the 

' The reader may fiud some very curious facts atout the appointments 
of Irish magistrates in the early part of this century in O'Flanagan's 
' Lives of tlie Irish Cliancellors ' (Life of Lord Manners) ; Lord Clon- 
curry's ' Personal Recollections ; ' and Bulwer's ' Life of Lord Palmer- 
ston,' vol. i. p. 337. 



252 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

former, as much as in the latter, a strong disposition 
to screen criminals from justice. 

These are the shades of the picture, and they are 
sufficiently dark. On the other hand, as the eighteenth 
century advanced, the character of the higher classes 
improved. Drinking and duelling, though still very 
general, had appreciably diminished. The demoralising 
influence of the penal laws was mitigated. The gentry 
were gradually rooted to the soil, and a strong national 
feeling having arisen, they ceased to look upon them- 
selves as aliens or conquerors. The Irish character is 
naturally intensely aristocratic ; and when gross oppres- 
sion was not perpetrated, the Irish landlords were, ] 
imagine, on the whole very popular, and the rudcj 
good-humoured despotism which they wielded wae 
cordially accepted. Their extravagance, their lavish 
hospitality, their reckless courage, their keen sporting 
tastes, won the hearts of their people, and the feudal 
sentiment that the landlord should command the votes 
of his tenants was universal and unquestioned. The 
measure of 1793, conferring votes on the Catholics, 
though it is said to have weakened the zeal of some of 
the advocates of Parliamentary reform, left this feeling 
unchanged. Nor were the Irish gentry without quali- 
ties of a high order. The love of witty society ; the pas- 
sion for the drama and especially for private thea- 
tricals, which was very general in Ireland through the 
eighteenth century ; and, above all, the great school 
of Parliamentary eloquence in Dublin, indicated and 
fostered tastes very different from those of naiere 
illiterate country squires. The noble efflorescence of 
political and oratorical genius among Irishmen in the 
last quarter of the century, the perfect calm with 
which great measures for the relief of the Catholics 
which would have been impossible in England were 



THE IRISH LANDLORDS. 253 

received in Ireland ; above all, the manner in which 
the Volunteer movement was organised, directed, and 
controlled, are decisive proofs that the upper classes 
possessed many high and commanding qualities, and 
enjoyed in a very large measure the confidence of their 
inferiors. They were probably less uncultivated, and 
they were certainly much less bigoted, than the corre- 
sponding class in England, and as long as they consented 
to be frankly Irish, their people readily followed them. 
Occasional instances of deliberate tyranny and much 
sudden violence undoubtedly took place ; but it should 
be remembered that during the whole of the eighteenth 
century the greater part of Ireland was let at very long 
leases, and that the margin between the profits of the 
tenant and the rent of the landlord was so great that 
the former almost invariably sublet his tenancy at an 
increased rent. The distress of the people was much 
more due to this system of middlemen, and to their own 
ignorance and improvidence, than to landlord tyranny; 
and the faults of the upper classes, in dealing with 
their tenants, were rather those of laxity and im- 
prudence than of harshness. The absence of any legal 
provision for the poor produced great misery, and had 
a bad economical effect in removing one of the great 
inducements to the gentry to check pauperism ; but, 
on the other hand, it fostered a very unusual spirit 
of private charity through the country. Absenteeism 
was much complained of; but this probably sprang 
more from the great tracts of confiscated land which 
had been given to great English proprietors, than from 
the systematic absence of the natives. The presence 
of a Parliament secured a brilliant society in Dublin ; 
and in the country travellers represent the roads as 
rather better than in England, and the coiuitry seats 
as numerous and imposing. The absence of rival 



254 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

authority and of religious intolerance, and the character 
of the people, made the social system work better than 
might have been expected. Good-nature is, perhaps, 
the most characteristic Irish virtue ; and if it is not 
one of the highest, it is at least one of the most useful 
qualities that a nation can possess. It will soften the 
burden of the most oppressive laws and of the most 
abject poverty, and the only evil before which it is 
powerless is sectarian zeal. O'Connell evoked that 
zeal, and the bond between landlord and tenant was 
broken. ' I have polled all the gentry, and all the 
50^. freeholders,' wrote Mr. Fitzgerald to Sir E. Peel, 
when giving an account of his defeat — ' the gentry to a 
man.' The attitude which the landlord class after- 
wards assumed during the agitation for Eepeal com- 
pleted the change, and they have never regained 
their old position. 

It must be added that another important train of 
causes was operating in the same direction. The eco- 
nomical condition of Ireland had long been profoundly 
diseased. The effect of the confiscations, and of the 
penal laws, had been that almost all the land belonged 
to Protestants, while the tenants were chiefly Catholics. 
The effect of the restrictions on trade had been that 
manufacturing industry was almost unknown, and the 
whole impoverished population was thrown for subsist- 
ence upon the soil. At the same time the English 
land laws, which are chiefly intended to impede the 
free circulation and the division of land, were in force 
in the country in which, beyond all others, such circu- 
lation is desirable. One of the most important objects 
of a wise legislation is to soften the antagonism between 
landlord and tenant by interweaving their interests, by 
facilitating the creation of a small yeoman class who 
break the social disparity, and by providing outlets for 



ECONOMICAL CONDITION OF IRELAND. 255 

the surplus agricultural population. In Ireland none 
of these mitigations existed ; and the difference of reli- 
gion, and the memory of ancient violence, aggravated 
to the utmost the hostility. The tithes, levied for the 
most part on the poor Catholics for the support of the 
Church of the landlords, were another element of dissen- 
sion. All the materials of the most dangerous social 
war thus existed, though the personal popularity of the 
landlords, and the prostrate condition of the Catholics, 
for a time postponed the evil. The habits of disorder, 
and the secret organisations which had arisen in the 
middle of the eighteenth century, continued to smoulder 
among the people, and in the great distress that fol- 
lowed the sudden fall of prices which accompanied the 
peace, they broke out afresh. The land, as I have 
said, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, 
was chiefly let at moderate rents on long leases. The 
tenant usually sublet his tenancy, and on the great rise 
of prices resulting from the war, the sub-tenant usually 
took a similar course, and the same process continued 
till there were often four or five persons between the 
landlord and the cultivator of the soil. The peasants, 
accustomed to the lowest standard of comfort, and 
e couraged by their priests to marry early, multiplied 
recklessly. The land was divided into infinitesimal 
farms, and all classes seemed to assume that war prices 
would be perpetual. Many landlords, bound by their 
leases, were unable to interfere with the process of 
division, while others acquiesced in it through laxity 
of temper or dread of unpopularity ; and others encou- 
raged it, as the multiplication of 40s. freeholders in- 
creased the number of voters whom they could control. 
In such a condition of affairs, the fall in the value of 
agricultural produce after the peace proved a crushing 
calamity. Large sections of the people were on the verge 



256 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of starvation, and among all agricultural labourers 
there was a distress and a feeling of oppression which 
alienated them from their landlords, and predisposed 
them to follow new leaders. 

When introducing the Koman Catholics to Parlia- 
ment, the Ministers brought forward two or three mea- 
sures with the object of diminishing their power, the 
only one of any real value being the disfranchisement 
of the 40s. freeholders. This measure greatly lessened 
the proportion of the Eoman Catholic electors. It 
struck off a number of voters who were far too ignorant 
to form independent opinions, and it in some degree 
checked the fatal tendency to subdivision of lands. It 
would have been well if the Ministers had stopped 
here ; but, with an infatuation that seems scarcely cre- 
dible, they proceeded in this most critical moment to 
adopt a policy which had the effect of irritating the 
Koman Catholics to the utmost, without in any degree 
diminishing their power, and of completely preventing 
the pacific effects that concession might naturally have 
had. Their first act was to refuse to admit O'Connell 
into Parliament without re-election, on the ground 
that the Emancipation Act had passed since his elec- 
tion. It was felt that this refusal Avas purely political, 
and designed to mark their reprobation of his career. 
It was, of course, utterly impotent, for O'Connell was 
at once re-elected ; but it was accepted by the whole 
people as an insult and a defiance. O'Connell himself 
was extremely irritated, and to the end of his life his 
antipathy to Sir Kobert Peel was of the bitterest and 
most personal character. He said of him that ' his 
smile was like the silver plate on a coffin.' There was, 
perhaps, no single measure that did so much to foster 
the feeling of discontent in Ireland as this paltry and 
irrational proceeding. 



CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 257 

It was succeeded by another indication of the same 
spirit. By the Emancipation Act the higher positions 
in the Bar were thrown open, as well as the Parlia- 
ment. A distribution of silk gowns naturally followed ; 
and, while several Eoman Catholic barristers obtained 
this distinction, O'Connell, who occupied the very fore- 
most position, was passed over. Among those who 
were promoted was Shell, who had co-operated with 
him through the whole struggle. It now, too, became 
manifest that the Tories were determined to render the 
Emancipation Act as nugatory as was possible, by never 
promoting a Roman Catholic to the bench. For some 
time under their rule the exclusion was absolute. The 
Relief Bill was also accompanied by a temporary Act 
suppressing the Catholic Association, and enabling the 
Lord-Lieutenant, during the space of rather more than 
a year, to suppress arbitrarily, by proclamation, any 
association or assembly he might deem dangerous. 
A measure of this kind suspended every vestige of 
political liberty, and left the people as discontented 
as ever. O'Connell declared that justice to Ireland 
was not to be obtained from an English Parliament, 
and the tide of popular feeling set in with irresisti- 
ble force towards Repeal. Of all possible measures, 
Catholic emancipation might, if judiciously carried, 
have been most efficacious in allaying agitation, and 
making Ireland permanently loyal. Had it been 
carried in 1795 — as it undoubtedly would have been if 
Pitt had not recalled Lord Fitzwilliam — the country 
would have been spared the Rebellion of 1798, and all 
classes might have rallied cordially round the Irish 
Parliament. Had it been carried at, or immediately 
after, the Union — as it would have been if Pitt had 
not again betrayed the cause — it might have assuaged 
the bitterness which that measure caused, and produced 



258 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

a cordial amalgamation of the two nations. It was 
delayed until sectarian feeling on both sides, and in 
both countries, had acquired an enduring intensity, 
and it was at last conceded in a manner that produced 
no gratitude, and was the strongest incentive to further 
agitation. In estimating the political character of 
Sir E. Peel, it must never be forgotten that on the 
most momentous question of his time he was for many 
years the obstinate opponent of a measure which is 
now almost universally admitted to liave been not only 
j ust, but inevitable ; that his policy having diiven Ire- 
land to the verge of civil war, he yielded the boon he 
had refused simply to a menace of force ; and that lie 
accompanied the concession by a display of petty and 
impotent spite which deprived it of half its utility and 
of all its grace. 

The exasperation of O'Connell at these measures was 
extreme. He denounced the Ministry of Wellington 
and Peel with reckless violence, endeavoured in 1830 
to embarrass it by a mischievous letter recommending 
a run upon gold, revived the Catholic Association 
imder new names and forms, and energetically agitated 
for the repeal of the Union. The proclamations of the 
Lord-Lieutenant, however, suppressed these associa- 
tions, and when he attempted to hold public meetings 
he was compelled to yield to a jirosecution ; the upper 
classes strongly discouraged the new agitation, and the 
Ministry of Wellington soon tottered to its fall. In 
the beginning of 1831 he accordingly desisted from agi- 
tation, ostensibly in order to test the eifect of emanci- 
pation upon the policy of the Imperial Parliament. The 
Eeform question was at this time rising to its height. 
O'Connell advocated the most extreme Radical views, 
and, in 1830, brought in a Bill for universal suffrage, 
triennial Parliaments, and the ballot. He wrote a 



imSir DISTURBANCES. 259 

series of letters on the question. He brought the whole 
force of his influence to act upon it, and his followers 
contributed largely to the triumph of the measure of 
1832 — a fact which was remembered with great bitter- 
ness when the Reformed Parliament began its career 
by an extremely stringent Coercion Bill for Ireland. 

The social condition of Ireland was, indeed, at this 
time most deplorable. Agrarian murders and tithe 
riots, the burning of houses and the mutilation of 
cattle, were of almost daily occurrence. Secret socie- 
ties ramified over the country, and in a considerable 
part of Leinster absolute anarchy was reigning. The 
bonds that united society were broken, law was utterly 
discredited, and class warfare and religious animosity 
were supreme. 

To a certain extent O'Connell was undoubtedly re- 
sponsible for these crimes. He had first awakened the 
Catholics out of their torpor, made them sensible of 
their wa'ongs, and taught them to look to themselves 
for the remedy. He had begun a fierce political 
agitation which propagated itself in various forms 
through all classes of the community. He had broken 
down the reverence for rank, set class against class, 
lashed an excitable people to frenzy by the most in- 
flammatory language, distinctly encouraged them to 
refuse the payment of tithes, and palliated, or more 
than palliated, all the violence to which that refusal 
led. On the other hand, he iiniformly denounced 
secret societies wath unqualified severity, and repre- 
sented them as the most fatal obstacles to his policy. 
' He who commits a crime adds strength to the enemy,' 
was one of his favourite mottos, and he had few 
greater diSiculties to encounter than the Coercion Bills 
w^hich these lawless outbursts provoked. It should also 
not be forgotten, in considering the connection between 



260 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

political agitation and crimes of violence, tliat the 
latter almost disappeared in Ireland during the Eepeal 
movement, when the former was at its height. 

Whatever opinion, however, may be formed about the 
manner in which the blame of these outrages should 
be distributed, they are in themselves at least suffi- 
ciently explicable. A people, poor, ignorant, and 
extremely excitable, had been virged into a furious and 
most successful agitation. A fierce war of classes and 
a fierce religious animosity were raging, and at the 
same time the whole administration of justice and the 
whole local government were in the hands of men in 
whom the great majority of the population could have 
no confidence. In 1833 — four years after Catholic 
emancipation — there was not in Ireland a single Catholic 
judge or stipendiary magistrate. All the high sheriffs 
with one exception, the overwhelming majority of the 
unpaid magistrates and of the grand jurors, the five 
inspectors-general, and the thirty-two sub-inspectors of 
police, were Protestant. The chief towns were in the 
hands of narrow, corrupt, and, for the most part, 
intensely bigoted corporations. Even in a Whig 
Government, not a single Irishman had a seat in 
the Cabinet, and the Irish Secretary was Mr. Stan- 
ley, whose imperious manners and unbridled temper 
had made him intensely hated. For many years 
promotion had been steadily withheld from those who 
advocated Catholic emancipation, and the majority of 
the people thus found their bitterest enemies in the 
foremost places. Their minds were now turned eagerly 
towards Eepeal, and they were told by the English 
Minister that the constitutional expression of their 
desire would be perfectly useless, and that ' the people 
of England would resist it to the death.' At the same 
time, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the 



TITHES. 261 

British constitution had no existence in Ireland. Sir 
R. Peel, in one of his speeches in 1829, made an ad- 
mission which is an instructive comment on the 
common eulogies of the pacifying wisdom of the Irish 
policy of Pitt. He stated thut in scarcely one year 
since the Union was Ireland governed by ordinary law.' 
The Habeas Corpus Act, which is perhaps the most 
important part of the British constitution, was sus- 
pended in Ireland in 1800, from 1802 till 1805, from 
1807 till 1810, in 1814, from 1822 till 1824.^ There 
was no public provision for the poor. There was no 
system of national education except the Sectarian 
Kildare Street Society. Above all, while the Catholic 
priests received no payment from Government, the 
poorest Catholic cottager was compelled to pay some- 
thing to support the hostile and aggressive Church of 
the rich minority. There are few methods of levying 
money which have been in general more unpopular 
than tithes, this impost being, as Paley observed, ' not 
only a tax on industry, but the industry that feeds 
mankind,' and of course the natural objections to it 
were immeasurably intensified when it was levied from 
a half-starving peasantry, who derived no religious 
benefit from the ministrations of those they were com- 
pelled to pay. A second rent, raised from the most 
impoverished classes of the community in favour of 
men who contributed nothing to production, and in 
order that they might oppose the religious convictions 
of those who paid them, was a grievance so monstrous, 
so palpable, and so universally felt, that it could not fail, 
when the Catholics acquired some measure of self- 
confidence, to produce a general conflagration. In the 

' See Doxibleday's ' Life of Sir R. Peel,' vol. i. pp. 482. 483. 
^ Sir E. May's ' Constitutional History,' vol. ii. p. 270. 



262 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

eighteentli century the Whiteboys had been chiefly 
organised in opposition to the tithes, and the landlords 
were said sometimes to have instigated them. A 
resolution of the House of Commons in 1735, which 
was converted into a regular law just before the Union, 
relieved pasture in a great measure of tithes, thus 
throwing the burden chiefly on the cottier class ; and 
there were some curious inequalities which Grattan 
exposed and denounced in the burdens imposed on the 
different counties. The clergy, by their profession and 
habits, were of course very unfitted to collect the tithes, 
and the extreme minuteness of Irish tenancies added 
greatly to the difficulty. Shortly before the tithes in 
Ireland were commuted it was stated officially that in 
a single parish in Carlow the sum owed by 222 de- 
faulters was one farthing each, and that a very large 
proportion of the defaulters throughout the country 
were for sums not exceeding one shilling. Under 
these circumstances, the clergy very naturally farmed 
out their interest to tithe -proctors, who often exercised 
their rights with extreme harshness, and became more 
hated than any other class in the country. Grattan 
had vainly laboured to have tithes commuted, and 
much ecclesiastical superstition was shown in defend- 
ing a system which, on grounds of expediency and 
groimds of equity, was utterly untenable. At last a 
general conspiracy to refuse payment spread over 
Ireland, and every kind of outrage was directed both 
against those who collected and those who paid them. 
The law was utterly paralysed. The clergy, deprived 
of their lawful income, were thrown into the deepest 
distress. Government came to their assistance by 
advancing 60,000^ in 1832 for the clergy who had 
been imable to collect their tithes in the preceding 
year, and it undertook to collect the unpaid tithes of 



COERCION BILL. 263 

1831. The attempt was a signal failure. The arrears 
for that year were 104,000/., and of that sum, after 
fierce conflicts and much bloodshed, the Grovernment 
recovered 12,000Z. at a cost of 15,000^. Scarcely any- 
one ventured to defy the popular will by paying the 
tithes. It was with difficulty that the ordinary legal 
process of distraint was executed ; and when in obe- 
dience to the law the cattle or crops of the defaulter 
were put up to auction no one dared to buy them. 
A lawless combination, sustained by the consciousness 
of a real grievance, completely triumphed, and the 
presence of a Protestant clergyman was often sufficient 
to demoralise an entire district. 

As I am not writing a history of Ireland, I shall only 
advert very briefly to the important measures by which 
the reformed Parliament endeavoured to check these 
evils. The first measure, as I have said, was a coercive 
Bill surpassing in stringency any to which Ireland had 
yet been made subject, and directed not only against 
crime, but also against political agitation. Among 
other provisions, it replaced the ordinary tribunals in 
the proclaimed districts by martial law ; and it took 
away over the whole of Ireland all liberty of political 
meeting and discussion. That some measure of severe 
coercion was necessary is incontestable ; for it was com- 
puted that in 1832 there were more than 9,000 crimes 
perpetrated in Ireland connected with the disturbed 
state of the coimtry, and among them nearly 200 cases 
of homicide. At the same time martial law, which was 
equivalent to a total suspension of the constitution, was 
a measure of extraordinary though perhaps not exces- 
sive severity, and appeared especially so in Ireland, 
Avhere the atrocities perpetrated under that law in 1798 
were still remembered. The part, however, of the Coer- 
cion Bill which excited the most intense and most 



264 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

natural animosity was that which was directed against 
political action. The repeal of the Union, whether it 
was wise or the reverse, was an object at which it was 
perfectly constitutional to aim. Parliament had an un- 
doubted right to effect it, and therefore the people had 
an equally undoubted right to petition for it. If it had 
been constitutional before 1800 to advocate a union, 
it was equally constitutional after 1800 to advocate its 
repeal. Agrarian and tithe outrages were chiefly reign- 
ing in one of the four provinces ; but by the Coercion 
Bill of Mr. Stanley no political meeting could be held 
in any part of Ireland without the express permission 
of the Lord-Lieutenant. The King's speech, which fore- 
shadowed the measure, like two preceding ones, con- 
tained a paragraph directed against O'Connell and his 
agitation, and the Coercion Bill appeared especially ob- 
noxious, as coming from a Whig Ministry in a reformed 
Parliament, immediately after the Reform Bill which 
O'Connell had contributed not a little to carry. 

It is scarcely possible, without possessing the de- 
tailed evidence which is at the disposal of a govern- 
ment, to pronounce with confidence upon whether the 
state of the country required or justified these clauses. 
It is not, however, surprising that they exasperated 
O'Connell to the highest degree ; and at no period of 
his career was his language more violent than during 
the Ministry of Lord Grey. It was at this time that he 
talked of the 'base, bloody, and brutal Whigs,' and 
described them as men ' with brains of lead and hearts 
of stone and fangs of iron.' He and Mr. Stanley 
hated one another with the most intense hatred ; and 
Parliamentary oratory contains very few instances of 
fiercer and more powerful invective than they ex- 
changed. Sir Robert Peel and the Tories strongly sup- 
ported the Coercion Bill, and the House was generally 



iRisn cnuRCH. 265 

bitterly hostile to O'Connell ; but the extraordinary 
vigour and eloquence of his opposition had at length 
their reward. The Coercion Bill was carried in 1833, 
but a strong feeling against its political clauses was 
aroused among Liberals ; and when it was intended 
to renew them in the following year, there was a dis- 
sension in the Cabinet, of which O'Connell was in- 
formed, and which he disclosed in the House. The 
result was that the Coercion Bill was only re-enacted 
in a modified form and without the political clauses. 
Lord Grey retired from office, and Lord Melbourne 
became the head of a Ministry of which O'Connell was 
tlie chief support. 

The measures, however, which were carried by the 
reformed Parliament were not simply coercive ; they 
were also in a very large measure remedial. The 
subject which, if not the most important, was at least 
the most eagerly discussed, was the L'ish Church ; and 
there was none upon which O'Connell felt more keenly. 
Himself a fervent Catholic, the main object of his 
policy was to raise the Catholics out of the condition 
of a proscribed and degraded caste ; and there is much 
reason for believing that he would have given up the 
notion of Eepeal if he could have otherwise secured 
this equality. With the exception of his advocacy of 
Repeal, no part of his Irish policy injured him so 
much in the eyes of the English people as the opinions 
he hazarded about the Church ; but, judged by the 
light of the events of our own day, they will be pro- 
nounced very reasonable and very moderate. He never 
appears to have advocated the withdrawal of all re- 
venue from the Protestants, nor did he desire any 
further assistance than glebes to be given to the 
priests. The details of his proposal were more than 
once varied, but the main object was to put an end to 
13 



266 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the grievance of tithes. The Church lands he was 
willing to leave wholly or in a very great degree with 
their present possessors, and tliey would furnish a reve- 
nue which with very moderate assistance from voluntary 
sources would be amply sufficient for the real wants 
of the Protestants. The tithe fund before all things 
was to cease to be a tribute paid to the Protestant 
Church. About its disposition there was much differ- 
ence of opinion. Probably the most popular solution 
svould have been the simple cessation of the tithe 
payment, and this would have been a benefit both to 
the landlords and tenants; but other schemes, such as 
applying the fund to secular instruction or to build- 
ing new charitable institutions, were advocated ; and 
O'Connell appears finally to have settled upon the pre- 
cise disposition which many years after his death was 
adopted by Mr. Gladstone. ' My plan,' he said, in a 
letter to Mr. Sharman Crawford in September 1834, 
' is to apply the fund in the various counties of Ire- 
land to relieve the occupiers of land from grand jury 
cess, .... to defray all the expenses of dispensaries, 
infirmaries, hospitals, and asylums, and to multiply the 
number of these institutions until they become quite 
sufficient for the wants of the sick.' 

In this, however, as on many other points, O'Connell 
was considerably in advance of his age. With the 
exception of a few Eadicals, no class in England would 
have tolerated such a measure. A growing school at 
Oxford and in the country looked upon all interference 
with Church revenues as sacrilege, and the famous 
work of Mr. Gladstone embodied and widely diffused 
what may be called the transcendental arguments in 
favour of establishments. Sir E. Peel admitted that 
the State had a right to change and regulate the dis- 
tribution of Church revenues, but he denied that it 



IRISII CHURCH. 267 

had any right to divert them from Church purposes ; 
and, in the case of the Irish Church, he maintained on 
the ground of the Act of Union, that disendowment 
would be a distinct breach of faith. That Act, he 
said, < differs in this respect from an ordinary hiw, that 
it was a national compact, involving the conditions on 
which the Protestant Parliament of Ireland resigned 
its independent existence. In that compact express 
provision is made which, if anything can have, has an 
obligation more binding than that of ordinary law. 
.... A right was reserved in that Act with respect 
to tlie removal of the civil disabilities of the Catho- 
lics, but no right was reserved to the United Parliament 
to deal with the property of the Church of Ireland.' 

The Tory party, therefore, whether they adopted 
the extreme views of the new Oxford school or the 
more moderate views of Sir Eobert Peel, were united 
in resisting any diminution of the revenues of the 
Church ; and they could enlist in their cause the two 
cries of ' No Popery ' and ' the Church in danger,' which 
were probably the most powerful in England. The 
Whigs were not equally united. A small but very 
able section agreed with Sir Eobert Peel that the 
power of Parliament extended only to the redistri- 
bution, but not to the alienation of ecclesiastical 
revenues. The main body, however, including Lord 
Grey, Lord Althorp, and Lord John Eussell, maintained 
that Parliament had a right, when the wants of the 
Protestants were adequately supplied, to apply the 
sm-plus revenues of the Church to purposes of edu- 
cation or of charity that would be beneficial to the 
whole community. The first attempt to carry out this 
policy was in the Ministry of Lord Grey, when a clause 
was introduced in the ' Church Temporalities Act,' to 
give Parliament the disposal of a surplus resulting 



268 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

from the grant of perpetual leases of Church lands ; 
but this clause, which was very restricted in its opera- 
tion, was abandoned in committee as likely to en- 
danger the success of the Bill. The subject was once 
or twice renewed during the same Ministry, and the 
opinion of the Government clearly pronounced, but 
nothing decided was done till Sir Eobert Peel came 
into office. He was governing with a minority of the 
House, and his Ministry was obviously ephemeral. He 
brought in a measure for commuting Irish tithes in 1 835, 
when Lord John Eussell moved as an amendment the 
famous Appropriation Clavise, affirming that any surplus 
revenues of the Irish Church not required for the reli- 
gious wants of the Protestants should be applied to 
the moral and religious education of the people at 
large, and that no measure concerning tithes would be 
satisfactory which did not embody this principle. The 
resolution was carried. Sir R. Peel retired from office, 
and Lord Melbourne became Prime Minister. 

If it be considered as a mere party move, there has 
seldom been a more disastrous mistake than that of 
the Whigs in bringing forward this Appropriation 
Clause, and in selecting it as the question on which to 
overthrow the first feeble Ministry of Sir R. Peel. 
At the same time, there never was a more loyal or 
moderate attempt to remedy a great injustice. By 
the confession of all parties, the existing condition of 
the Church was scandalous in the extreme, the number 
and emoluments of the bishops were absurdly out of 
proportion to the numbers of their flocks, and there 
were 151 instances of parislies containing not a single 
Protestant. Few persons will now deny that the 
Church revenues might have been justly diminished, or 
that an application of a portion of them to the benefit 
of tlie whole community would have strengthened the 



cnuRcn REFORMS. 269 

position of the Church. The Ministry of Lord Mel- 
bourne, however, soon found the task they had under- 
taken beyond their powers. Lord J. Eussell, as 
JNIinister, duly brought in the clause as a portion of 
the Bill for commuting- tithes, but although it was 
carried through tlie House of Commons it was only by 
a small majority, and a majority of the English mem- 
bers were against the Government. Mr. Stanley, the 
most brilliant orator, and Sir J. Graham, who was one 
of the ablest administrators of the Whigs, with a few 
others, had seceded from the party on this question as 
early as 1834, and were strenuously opposed to the 
Government. O'Connell ridiculed the small number 
of the secessionists, quoting with great effect the lines 
of Canning — 

Adown thy dale, romantic Ashbourne, glides 
The Derby Dilly with just six insides. 

But the ability and the political weight then with- 
drawn from the Whigs were never adequately re- 
placed. The violence of O'Connell, who supported 
the Appropriation Clause with passionate zeal, pro- 
duced a strong Conservative reaction in England. The 
King was known to be opposed to the policy of his 
Ministers, and the House of Lords by large majorities 
rejected the clause. In the meantime the tithes ques- 
tion continued in abeyance, and it was plain that until 
it was settled there could be no real peace in Ireland. 
There were not wanting those who urged the Ministers, 
as the sole means of carrying their Bill, to avail 
themselves of the fierce Kadical spirit which was abroad, 
and which demanded the subversion of the House of 
Lords or its organic change. Happilj'', however, those 
who then guided tlie policy of England were deeply 
and fervently attached to the constitution. Had they 
persevered, a violent revolutionary spirit might have 



270. DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



1 



arisen ; and, by abandoning the Appropriation Clause 
in 1838, they probably saved the country from an irre- 
trievable disaster at the cost of a ruinous party humi- 
liation. 

But although this measure failed, two important 
Church reforms were carried. By ' the Church Tem- 
poralities Act of 1833,' the revenues of the Church 
were redistributed and its most excessive abuses cor- 
rected. Two archbishoprics and eight bishoprics, as 
well as a number of minor dignitaries, were abolished. 
Considerable reductions were made in the revenues of 
the other bishoprics, and provision was made out of 
the surplus thus obtained for augmenting small livings 
and building glebes and churches. The Establishment 
was thiis made more defensible than before. If it con- 
tinued to be an anomaly it ceased to be a scandal ; its 
offices were no longer pampered sinecures, and its digni- 
ties at last bore a fair proportion to the number of its 
worshippers. In one respect the Bill Avas a benefit to 
the Catholics, for the Church cess, which had been 
levied chiefly from Catholics and dispensed by Protes- 
tant vestries, was replaced by a tax upon the clergy for 
the repair of churches. The unceremonious way in 
which superfluous bishoprics were abolished gave great 
offence in some quarters in England, and was one of 
the proximate causes of the Tractarian movement. 
A still more important reform was after long delay 
and many vicissitudes at last effected in 1838, with the 
concurrence of both of the great parties in Parliament. 
I mean the substitution of a land tax for the old 
system of tithes. By this substitution the burden was 
removed from the peasants, who were nearly all Eoman 
Catholics, and imposed on the landlords, who were 
nearly all Protestiints. Twenty-five per cent, was taken 
off the clerical income derived from titlies in con- 



TITHES COMPOSITION. 271 

sideration of the certainty, facility, and inexpensive- 
ness of its collection under the new system. 

Tl\is measure was violently opposed by O'Connell, 
who desired to see the tithes either simply abolished 
or diverted from Church purposes, a course which would 
undoubtedly have been the most popular in Ireland. 
It was contended by the political economists that the 
change would give no real relief to the tenant, as the 
burden that was transferred to the landlord would be 
met by a corresponding increase of rent. But this, 
like all similar doctrines of j)olitical economy, is true 
only in as far as land is dealt with simply and rigidly 
on commercial principles, and in Ireland as a matter 
of fact it has never generally been let at the extreme 
competitive price. Of this fact the great place which 
the middlemen occujDy in Irish agrarian history is a 
decisive proof. The Irish landlords readily assumed 
the burden in consideration of the land tax being 
applied to the support of their own Church, and the 
rents were not, I believe, in general raised. It 
is worthy, too, of notice, that when the Established 
Church was recently disendowed, no voice outside of 
the landlord class was raised in favour of simply 
abolishing the land tax, although that tax was said to 
have been in reality paid by the occupying class, and 
although it is probable that the majority of that 
class, if they had been consulted in 1835, would have 
voted for the abolition of tithes. 

The tithes composition measure had the disadvan- 
tage of being conceded, like most Irish measures, to 
violence, and it has not proved a final arrangement. 
Subject to these qualifications, however, it deserves 
the highest praise. Few laws have ever been so 
completely successful in eradicating a great source 
of crime and allaying dangerous agitation. The 



272 DANIEL OCONNELL. 

Protestant clergy, constituting a class of country gentry 
where such a class was i3eculiarly needed, and dis- 
charging many charitable and civilising functions to- 
wards the Catholic population, have, when they have 
abstained from active proselytising, been in general 
eminently popular, and the signal devotion which 
they manifested amid the horrors of the famine ob- 
tained for them a large measui'e of well-earned grati- 
tvide. During the last twenty-five years, in the worst 
periods of Irish crime, and in the worst localities, they 
have invariably been unmolested and unmenaced. With 
the exceptions of the priests and of converts, no class 
of Irishmen has been very bitterly opposed to them, 
and probably few great measures have excited less 
genuine enthusiasm in Ireland than the English mea- 
sure for disendowing them. 

In addition to these measures, others of great import- 
ance were taken. Tlie system of national education, 
like all the branches of Irish administration, had been 
for a long time grossly unjust towards the Catholics. 
The Charter schools of Primate Boulter were distinctly 
proselytising, and some of the most iniquitous of the 
penal laws were those which forbade Catholics from 
engaging in the work of education. The ' Kildare 
Street Society,' which received an endowment from 
Government, and directed national education from 
1812 to 1831, was not proselytising, but its manage- 
ment fell into the hands of the Evangelical party, 
which was rapidly rising in Ireland, and a rule was 
adopted, making the reading of the Bible without 
note or comment compulsory in its schools. Such a 
rule was in direct contradiction to the teaching of the 
Catholic Church, and it naturally created very general 
discontent. In 1831, however, and 1832, a system of 
national education Avas founded in Ireland, which 



NAIIONAL EDUCATION. 273 

continues, though seriously modified, to the present day. 
It was chiefly devised by Lord Anglesey, Mr. Plunket, 
Mr. Stanley, Mr. Blake, and Lord Cloncurry, and was 
intended to give the whole mass of the people a united 
secular education, while it offered facilities for separate 
religious education. A large proportion, however, of 
the Protestant clergy discovered that there were sundry 
passages in the Old Testament and in the Ordination 
Service which made it criminal for them to take part 
in any system of education in which they were not 
allowed to teach all their pupils the Bible, and they 
accordingly set up a rival system, which still exists, 
and they thus threw the national education to a great 
extent into the hands of the priests. These latter, 
however, gradually became more and more Ultramon- 
tane ; it became one of their great ends to prevent the 
members of the two religions associating, and to im- 
pregnate ail teaching on purely secular subjects with 
their distinctive ecclesiastical tenets ; and they accord- 
ingly grew very hostile to the National Board. The 
original system was much tampered with to meet their 
wishes. The Church Education schools, in which the 
Bible is taught to everyone, are still unassisted by the 
Government, but endowments have been freely given to 
sectarian convent schools managed by monks or nuns. 
But these unjust, because unequal, departures from the 
original design have not saved the national system 
from the unanimous condemnation of the Catholic 
liierarchy. On the whole, that system has conferred 
upon the rising generation of Irishmen the inestimable 
blessing of a sound secular education; it has contri- 
buted in some degree to allay the animosity of sects ; 
and it would, I believe, be difficult to cite a single 
instance of a Catholic who has become a Protestant, 



1 



274 DANIEL OCONNELL. 



or a Protestant who has become a Catholic, under its 
influence. 

The liberal educational policy of the Whigs was 
fully adopted and extended by the Tory Government 
of Sir E. Peel. The College of Maynooth, intended 
for the education of the Irish priests, is one of the few 
existing* institutions which owe their origin to that 
Irish Parliament which is so often represented as the 
hotbed of bigotry. It was founded during the vice- 
royalty of Lord Fitzwilliam, when the French war 
excluded Irishmen from France, and when the dread 
of an influx of French ideas was very strong-, and it 
was a great boon to the Catholics, who previously pos- 
sessed no means of educating their own clergy in their 
own land. Sir E. Peel in 1845, besides granting 
30,000^. for building and improvements, nearly tripled 
the annual grant, and gave it a character of per- 
manence by charging it on the consolidated fund. 
He in the same year established the three Queen's 
Colleges, in which a perfectly unsectarian education 
was provided — an advantage of which, in spite of many 
priestly anathemas, the Catholics have largely availed 
themselves. 

Two other measures completed the work of reform. 
Although Ireland was one of the poorest countries in 
Europe — although a very large proportion of its popula- 
tion were continually on the verge of starvation — no 
legal provision existed for the destitute until 1838, 
when the Irish Poor-law was enacted. Although the 
corporations had been legally thrown open to Catholics 
in 1793, their constitution was so close that the admis- 
sion was practically illusory, and the principal cities 
of an essentially Catholic country were almost exclu- 
sively governed by Protestants. For forty-seven years 
after the Catholics had been made eligible not one was 



REFORM OF THE CORPORATIONS. 275 

elected into the corporation of Dublin. To remedy 
this gross injustice, the Government of Lord Melbourne, 
having carried a measure reforming the English cor- 
porations, brought forward in 1835 a similar measure 
for Ireland, but it was ardently opposed by Sir Eobert 
Peel, and rejected by the House of Lords. The Tory 
party was naturally alarmed at the transfer of power 
tliat would be effected, and O'Connell had injudiciously 
predicted that the corporations would be ' normal 
schools of agitation.' The House of Lords was willing 
to abolish the close corporations, but refused to appoint 
new bodies, and proposed to destroy all municipal 
government in Ireland, and to substitute for the mu- 
nicipal authorities functionaries appointed by the 
Crown. The contest between the two Houses was 
as obstinate as about the Appropriation Clause, and it 
continued till 1840, when it was ended by a compro- 
mise. The Bill was passed, but only in a curtailed 
and mutilated form, and fifty-eight corporations were 
abolished. O'Connell soon afterwards became Lord 
Mayor of Dublin — a triumph which occasioned among 
his followers much vulgar and paltry glorification, but 
which was really under the circumstances of some 
importance — and a petition in favour of Eepeal was 
voted by a large majority of the corporation. 

All these measures were the consequence of the new 
political importance which the Catholics had acquired, 
and of the pressure which they exerted upon public 
opinion under the influence of O'Connell. Consider- 
able however as they were, they by no means satisfied 
the great agitator, who would be content with nothing- 
short of a complete destruction of the edifice of 
ascendency, and who had strong special objections to 
two of the measures I have enumerated. As the 
mouthpiece of the priests, he denounced the Queen's 



276 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Colleges as ' godless colleges,' borrowing the phrase 
and adopting the argument of Sir 11. Inglis, a leader 
of the most extreme type of Tory. His objections to 
the poor-laws were of a different kind. He maintained 
with great force of argument the most rigid and most 
unpopular doctrines of the economists concerning the 
evils of guaranteeing relief to able-bodied paupers, and 
he also argued that a legal provision for the poor 
would check the spontaneous charity for which the 
lower classes in Ireland were remarkable, and tliat the 
workhouses would prove dangerous to female purity. 
The extent . and intensity of Irish poverty he had no 
disposition to u.nderrate, but. the remedies he proposed 
were of a different kind. He flung the whole weight 
of his influence into the temperance movement, and he 
urged upon the Government the propriety of abolishing 
tithes, imposing a tax upon absentees, and giving 
assistance to emigration, which he justly looked upon 
as the only remedy that was adequate to the disease. 
Sir E. Peel, on the other hand, maintained that the 
long sea voyage would always stand in the way of its 
adoption to any considerable extent.' 

While maintaining these views on Irish politics, he 
adopted on imperial questions the programme of the 
most extreme Eadicals, advocating manhood suffrage, 
vote by ballot, short Parliaments, and the substitution 
of an elective for an hereditary Upper House. This 
was perhaps the gravest error of his career, and the 
extravagance of his opinions, and the incendiary and 
vituperative language with which he defended them, 
alienated from him the great majority of educated 
men, and made his alliance with the Whigs a source 
of weakness to his friends. Nor does he, I conceive, in 

' 'Annual Eegister,' 1837, p. 70. At the time of tlio famine, how- 
ever, Peel recommended Government aid to emigration. 



niS DEMOCRACY. 277 

this part of his career, deserve much credit for sincerity. 
The levelling- disposition, the envious hatred of supe- 
riority and rank, which characterises the genuine 
English Kadical, was wholly foreign to his nature, and 
is indeed rarely found among Irishmen. His loyalty 
to the Sovereign was very warm, and not unfrequently 
showed itself in language of almost Oriental servility. 
His democratic crusade was probably simply an inci- 
dent of his Irish policy. An Irishman and a Catholic 
above all things, passionately attached to his country 
and his creed, he attacked with but little scruple any 
institution which stood in their way. To make numbers 
rather than wealth the source of political jiower would 
be to increase the relative importance of Ireland in the 
Empire, and of the Catholics in Ireland. In judging his 
conduct, we must remember that his policy was chiefly 
opposed by the aristocratic part of the State, tliat the 
House of Lords had steadily and persistently defeated 
or mutilated every attempt to raise the Catholics into 
equality with the Protestants, that the bitterest in- 
vectives were continually directed against him within 
its walls, and that it appeared idle to expect that Irish 
tithes could ever be abolished with its consent. Lord 
Lyndhurst pronounced the Irish to be ' aliens in race, 
in country, and religion.' O'Connell retorted by fierce 
denunciations of an hereditary caste overriding for 
selfish purposes the decisions of the representatives of 
the people. The Tory party desired to restrict the 
franchise in Ireland ; they had already abolished the 
forty-shilling freeholders, and Lord Stanley long 
afterwards ' attempted to carry the same policy still 
farther by imposing a system of registration so cum- 
brous and so troublesome that, if it had not been 
defeated by the Whigs, it would have virtually dis- 
' In 1810. 



278 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

francbised multitudes. O'Connell met this policy by 
maintaining tbe natural right of every man to a vote. 
His opponents in England appealed without the 
smallest scruple, and with eminent success, to the 
anti-Papal and anti-Irish feeling which was so strong 
in tbe lower strata of the English population. He 
retaliated by placing himself at the head of the wild 
movement for radical reform, and he carried his pro- 
pagandism, not only into the great towns of the north 
of England, but also into Calvinistic Scotland. The 
party was at this time singularly deficient in eloquence, 
and Hume, who was its most influential member, was 
perhaps the most tangled and inarticulate speaker Avho 
ever succeeded as a leader in England. ' He would 
speak better,' O'Connell once said, ' if he finished one 
sentence before he began the next but one after.' 
O'Connell, trusting to his marvellous powers of popular 
oratory, defied religious prejudices and national anti- 
pathy, and rarely failed to win a momentary triumph ; 
but his language was not suited to a cultivated English 
taste, and the revolutionary opinions he advocated, and 
the coarse personal abuse in which he continually 
indulged, justly lowered his influence with all sober 
persons. 

The part which he played in imperial politics was, 
however, far from contemptible. Perhaps the three 
most important Parliamentary measures of the present 
century are the emancipation of the Catholics, the 
Keform Bill of 1832, and the establishment of free 
trade in corn. The first was chiefly due to O'Connell. 
In one of the most important divisions in the first 
Parliament of William IV. his followers turned the 
balance in favour of tlie second. He was an early and 
a strenuous advocate of the third. Unlike those petty 
traitors who, while professing to follow in his steps. 



mS CAREER IN PARLIAMENT. 279 

have associated the cause of Irish nationality with the 
defence of negro slavery in America, of foreign mili- 
tary occupation in Italy, of Imperialism in P^rance, and 
of assassination at home, he was steadily Liberal in 
every part of his policy. Parliamentary reform, free 
trade, the emancipation of negros, the abolition of 
flogging in the army, the wrongs of Poland, the repeal 
of the taxes on knowledge, were among the causes he 
most ardently defended. Exercising an absolute autho- 
rity over a large body of members, and availing himself 
with great skill of the divisions of parties, he was 
always a great power in the House of Commons, tliough 
he never succeeded in altogether catching its tone. 

In debate he had to contend with almost overwhelm- 
ing obstacles. All parties were in general combined 
against him, and all the great English speakers were 
his opponents. On Irish questions he had the immense 
disadvantage of speaking amid the derisive clamour of 
liis audience, while his adversaries were cheered to the 
echo. The great majority of English and Scotch 
members regarded him with the strongest personal 
and political antipathy, and, with the exception of 
Shell — who, though a very brilliant rhetorician, was 
scarcely a great debater — no Irish member was able to 
give him any considerable assistance. Almost all the 
eminent men he had to encounter liad entered Parlia- 
ment very young, and had attained their skill in 
debate and their knowledge of their audience by a 
Parliamentary education of many years. O'Connell 
came into the House of Commons at fifty-four ; and a 
life spent in practising at the Irish Bar, or haranguing 
an Irish populace, was an exceedingly bad preparation 
for a Parliamentary career. But, notwithstanding all 
these disadvantages, his success as a debater was very 
great. His boundless readiness, his power of terse, 



280 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

nervous, Demosthenic reasoning, his thorough mastery 
of the subject he treated, the skill Avith which he con- 
densed and pointed his case, and the rich flow of his 
humorous or pathetic eloquence, placed him at once 
in the foremost rank. At the same time, his speeches 
were extremely unequal. It would be easy to point 
out many that were masterpieces of masculine power, 
but yet they were continually defaced by coarseness 
and scurrility, by recklessness of assertion, and by ex- 
travarant violence. In a discussion on as'ricultural 
distress he scandalised all honest men by proposing as 
the sole adequate remedy a compulsory reduction of 
the national debt. He never obtained credit for a 
high sense of honour, and he was lamentably de- 
ficient in self-respect. The tact which he always 
manifested in dealing with the populace sometimes 
deserted him signally in an assembly of gentlemen, 
and, although none of his contemporaries could argue 
a particular question with a more commanding power, 
the general effect of his speaking upon the educated 
classes in England was certainly far from favourable. 
As a rhetorician he was surpassed by Shell and 
Macaulay, but as a debater he was perhaps only 
equalled by Mr. Stanley, who, though probably greatly 
his inferior in general intellectual capacity, brought to 
the contest a far purer taste and a still fiercer temper, 
as well as a wonderful command of graceful and vigo- 
rous English, and an almost unrivalled dexterity in 
dialectic encounter. 

The debates on Mr. Stanley's Coercion Bill were 
perhaps the most splendid examples of his Parlia- 
mentary powers. Assisted only by occasional speeches 
by Shell, he had to bear the brunt of all the eloquence 
of Macaulay, Stanley, and Peel, together with numbers 
of minor orators, while Lord Brougham was inveighing 



surroRTS lord Melbourne. 281 

aj2;ainst him in the other House. Notwithstanding 
these powerful odds, it seems to have been very gene- 
rally admitted that in eloquence and in force he at 
least held his position throughout. O'Connell de- 
scribed the measure as a Bill directed against a single 
individual — himself. The interruptions he met with 
wei-e sufficient to disconcert any less practised orator. 
On one occasion his voice was completely drowned for 
some time by an explosion of this inarticulate elo- 
quence. When it had a little subsided, he exclaimed 
with characteristic impetuosity that he was not going 
to be put down ' by beastly bellowings ; ' upon which a 
member rose, and gravely observed that the epithet 
' beastly ' was out of order when applied to the excla- 
mations of members of the House. O'Connell pro- 
fessed his willingness to retract the obnoxious ex- 
pression, but added some apologetical remark to the 
eifect that he had never heard of any bellowings that 
were not beastly. The Speaker decided that the 
epithet was contrary to order, but not more so than 
the ejaculations that elicited it. 

His position towards English parties during a great 
part of his career was one of neutrality. The Tories 
he naturally detested, as the avowed enemies of Catholic 
emancipation and of reform ; the Whigs he at one 
time defined as ' Tories out of place ; ' and there 
was no Ministry to which he was more hostile than 
that which originated the Coercion Bill. When, how- 
ever, Lord Melbourne came into power, O'Connell 
gave his JMiuistry the whole weight of his support. 
His opponents Lord Grey and Mr. Stanley were no 
longer in the Ministry. The political clauses of the 
Coercion Bill had been abandoned. The Melbourne 
party had for the first time had the courage, by the 
appropriation clause, to attempt the application of 



282 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

some small parts of the Irish Church property to 
purposes of general utility, and the Irish Administra- 
tration of Lord Mulgrave, Lord Morpeth, and Mr. 
Drummond was eminently liberal and just. The 
Melbourne Ministry exliibited the rare spectacle of a 
Grovernment opposed by the majority of the English 
members in the House of Commons, and by the great 
majority of the House of Lords, and at the same time 
unpopular with the country, but kept in power by the 
votes of the Irish members. O'Connell supported it very 
loyally, and although in his position tliere was perhaps 
no great merit in not being a place-hunter, it is worthy 
of notice how cheerfully he acquiesced in his exclusion 
from a Ministry of which he was for some time the 
mainstay. On questions of persons and offices the 
Ministers found him uniformly moderate and con- 
ciliatory, and in this respect his attitude formed a 
marked contrast to that of Lord Brougham. In 1838 
he refused one of the highest legal positions in Ireland 
— that of Chief Baron. The Repeal cry at this time 
was suffered to sink, and in Ireland as in England 
O'Connell steadily and powerfully supported the Mi- 
nistry. 

There can, however, be no question that his support 
was ultimately a source of weakness. O'Connell Avas 
the especial bugbear of the English people — as he him- 
self said, ' the best-abused man alive.' As the typical 
Irishman, Catholic, and Repealer, he aroused against 
himself the fiercest national and religious prejudices of 
large classes of Englishmen, while others were scan- 
dalised by his violent agitation for democratic reform, 
by his advocacy of free trade in corn, and by the 
coarse, reckless, and vituperative language in which he 
continually indulged. The downfall of the Melbourne 
Ministry and the complete triumph of Sir R. Peel were 



HIS tNrOPULAEITY IN ENGLAND. 283 

due to many causes which it is not within the object of 
the present work to investi<>;ate, but among them the 
almost universal dislike of O'Connell in England, and 
the undoubted fact that the Ministry subsisted mainly 
by his support, were prominent. The appropriation 
clause led to a great party humiliation, because it 
was plainly repugnant to the wishes of the gTeat 
majority of the English people, and the anti-Popery 
and anti-Irish feelings were chief elements of the 
strong popular sentiment against the Grovernment. It 
would have been impossible to give O'Connell a place 
in it without shattering it, and there was no taunt 
against JMinisters more applauded than their alleged 
subserviency to the agitator. The House of Commons 
seldom rang with more enthusiastic plaudits than when 
Mr. Stanley, in one of his attacks upon the Govern- 
ment, quoted these lines from Shakespeare : 

But shall it be that you, that sot the crown 

Upon the head of this forgetful man, 

And, for his sake, wear the detested blot 

Of murd'rous subornation — shall it be 

That you a world of curses undergo. 

Being the agents, or base second means, 

The cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather ? 

Oh ! pardon me that I descend so low 

To show the line and the predicament, 

Wherein j-ou range under this subtle king. 

Shall it, for shame, be spoken in these days, 

Or fill up chronicles in time to come, 

That men of your nobility and power 

Did 'gage them both in an unjust. behalf. 

As both of 3'ou — God pardon it ! — have done ? 

And shall it, in more shame, be furtlier spoken. 
That you are fooled, discarded, and shook off 
By him for whom these shames ye underwent? 

With purely political classes the Kepeal policy of 
O'Connell was the chief cause of his unpopularity. 



284 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

English politicians of all classes Avere united against it, 
and the almost unanimous denunciation of the scheme 
by all sections of the English press has so discredited 
it in England that it is somewhat difficult to do justice 
to its supporters. In the opinion of the present writer 
Repeal in the form in which it was advocated by 
O'Connell would have been equally injurious to Ireland 
and to the empire ; but there was more to be said for 
the agitators than is commonly admitted. It should 
be remembered that O'Connell was old enough to 
recollect that Irish Parliament which he desired to 
restore ; that that Parliament, with all its faults, 
contained a greater amount of genius and patriotism 
than has ever, either before or since, been engaged in 
the administration of Irish affairs ; and that, whatever 
may have been the opinion of English statesmen, the 
unbribed talent of Ireland was almost unanimous 
against the Union. Canning had wittily compared the 
project of restoring the Irish Parliament to a project 
for restoring the Heptarchy, but an Irish politician who 
knew that the Parliament had existed only thirty years 
before, that many of its members remained, and that 
all the local ties and associations it had formed were 
still full of life, might be pardoned for thinking the 
comparison more ingenious than just. It should be re- 
membered too, in estimating the sincerity of O'Connell, 
that he had made his maiden speech against the Union ; 
that he had declared in that speech that, so far from 
desiring to purchase emancipation by the Union, he 
would rather the whole penal code should be re-enacted 
than that the Union should be passed ; that he had 
reverted again and again to the subject before emanci- 
pation had been carried ; and that in his dissatisfaction 
with the Union and its results he probably reflected the 
judgment, or at least the feeling, of some five-sixths of 



HIS AGITATIONS. 285 

tlie people of Ireland. He advocated Eepeal partly, no 
doubt, on the broad ground of nationality, but much 
more frequently on account of most definite grievances. 
He repeatedly urged as his main reason that he could 
not obtain 'justice to Ireland' from the Parliament 
in Westminster, and by this phrase he appears to have 
meant a condition of government in which, in the eyes 
of the State, an Irish Catholic should be placed on a 
level of perfect equality witli an English or an Irish 
Protestant. This aim has been of late years fully 
attained, but the very magnitude of the measures which 
Parliament has tlaought necessary to its accomplish- 
ment is a justification of the complaints of O'Connell. 
It was impossible that emancipation, conceded in the 
manner it was, should liave been accepted by the 
Catholics as sufficient, and before the measure had 
been carried O'Connell, in evidence before Parliament, 
had frankly said ' that unless it was done heartily and 
cordially it would only give them an additional power, 
and leave them the stimulant for exerting it.' An 
attempt had been made to deprive Ireland of all 
municipal freedom, and directly or indirectly to dis- 
franchise the great body of the Catholics. The Tory 
party had so disposed of Government appointments 
as virtually to continue the system of disqualifica- 
tion, and when the Melbourne Ministry endeavoured 
to act with equality between the two religions, and in 
some small degree to modify the position of the Pro- 
testant establishment, it was destroyed chiefl}^ on this 
very ground, and by tlie force of the anti-Irish and 
anti-Catholic feeling in the country the Tory jNli- 
nister was replaced in power. It was then, and then 
only, that O'Connell threw himself heart and soul into 
the struggle for Repeal. 

That he was by nature an agitator cannot be denied; 



286 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

and, while he was extremely ambitious, he was at no 
time very high-minded or very scrnpulous. One of 
the most remarkable features of his character was the 
steady and laborious perseverance with which through 
years of difficulty and discouragement he could sub- 
ordinate all his many-sided activity to a single am- 
bitious aim. In 1798, when still a young and unknown 
lawyer, he went through a very dangerous illness, and 
it is related of him that when he believed himself to 
be dying he was heard repeating those fine lines in 
' Douglas : ' 

Unknown I die. No tongue sliall speak of me : 
Some noble spirits, judging hy themselves, 
May yet conjecture what I might have proved, 
And think life only wanting to my fame. 

He was not one of those men who could ever, like 
Washington, have been content, when he had con- 
ferred one great blessing upon his countrymen, to 
retire in the full enjoyment of his faculties from the 
arena. He loved power and popularity too much. His 
energy was inexhaustible. He delighted in being con- 
tinually in the mouths of men, and in exercising that 
power of swaying great crowds which is at once one 
of the most intoxicating and one of the most dan- 
gerous of human gifts. But when all this is admitted 
it remains true that he was much less the creator than 
the director of the Eepeal agitation, and that dining 
a great part of his career he acted rather the part of 
a moderator than of an incendiary. He allayed agita- 
tion during the short administration of Canning. He 
acquiesced with scarcely a show of reluctance in tlie 
necessary disfranchisement of the 40s. freeholders. If 
his conduct after the Eelief Bill was very violent, the 
measures that accompanied it, the fierce spirit which 
a protracted struggle had aroused, and the danger of 



REPEAL. 287 

allowing" such agitators as Feargus O'Connor to direct 
the storm, do much to palliate his violence. During 
the whole of the Melbourne administration he kept 
the question of Eepeal in abeyance, and distinctly said 
that he would abandon the notion if the English 
Parliament would do justice to Ireland. In the second 
Ministry of Peel, it is true, he threw away the scabbard 
and threw all his energies into the struggle for Eepeal ; 
but even in 1843, in the very zenith of the move- 
ment, he wrote a letter giving a decided prefer- 
ence to the much more moderate scheme of a federal 
Union, under which the Irisli Parliament should be 
restricted to local affairs, while an Imperial Parliament 
should manage imperial ones. The wishes of the 
people and the policy of the Tories in a great measure 
forced him into agitation, and he abandoned fede- 
ralism simply because he found it almost universally 
unpopular. 

These facts are sufficient to show that O'Connell was 
not the selfish and reckless incendiary he is sometimes 
considered. At the same time, in spite of considerable 
hesitation and timidity in action, he was ever at heart 
a fervent Eepealer. Endowed to an extraordinary 
degree with that ' retrospective imagination ' which is 
so characteristic of his countrymen, the recollection of 
the Irish Parliament had been the earliest romance of 
his life. His ambition had been first kindled by those 
orators who shed a glow of such immortal eloquence 
over its fall. In him as in many Irishmen the shame- 
ful story of the Union awoke passions of the bitterest 
and most enduring resentment, and the possibility 
of forming an organisation that would restore the 
Parliament had been present to his mind through all 
the vicissitudes of his career. 

Did O'Connell believe in the possibility of obtaining 



288 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Repeal by agitation? To answer this question, as 
Gustave de Beaumont observes, but a little knowledge 
of human nature is required. We all know that the 
tendency of our minds is to underrate the difficulties 
of attaining- any object of ambition iu proportion to 
the duration and the enthusiasm of our desire. The 
lawyer after a few hours' study of a doubtful case will 
frequently become entirely identified with it, will 
persuade himself that its arguments are irresistibly 
cogent, and look forward with the utmost confidence 
to its triumph. How much more easily may the poli- 
tician become overconfident in a cause which has been 
the dream of liis life, and underestimate the obstacles 
in his path I It is impossible to read tlie published 
conversations of O'Connell without feeling that he was 
naturall}^ of a most sanguine temperament. It is im- 
possible to follow his career without perceiving that it 
was eminently calculated to foster such a temperament. 
He had entei-ed into politics upon an untrodden path, 
with no precedent to guide him, with no encourage- 
ment to cheer him, with no experience to sustain him. 
The most illustrious of his fellow-countrymen had pre- 
dicted his failure. He had seen public opinion among 
his co-religionists so faint as scarcely to be perceptible 
to the rulers. He had made it so terrible that the 
resolution of Wellington and the ability of Peel quailed 
beneath it. He had seen the society of his creation 
unable to secure the attendance of ten members at its 
meetings, and he had made it the ruler of Ireland. He 
had seen the Eoman Catholic clergy equally submis- 
sive and powerless, and by their instrumentality he 
had wielded the passions of the nation. Looking back 
to such a triumph as that of 1829, encouraged by the 
sympathy and admiration of the leading nations of 
Europe, and idolised by the immense majority in his 



POSSIBLE SUCCESS OF REPEAL. 289 

own, was it surprising- that lie should have entered with 
confidence and with cheerfulness upon the struggle ? 
His first object was to convince the people that their 
eiTorts would be successful ; and in convincing them 
he strengthened his own conviction. The occupation 
of his life for many years was to throw the Eepeal 
arguments into the most fascinating and imposing 
light ; and in doing so his own belief in his cause rose 
to fanaticism. It is related of him that he suggested 
that but one line should be graven upon his tomb- — 
* He died a Repealer.' 

And was his hope so absolutely unreasonable ? Was 
it impossible — was it even very improbable — that the 
Irish Parliament might have been restored ? O'Con- 
nell perceived clearly that the tendency of affairs in 
Europe was towards the recognition of the principle 
that a nation's will is the one legitimate rule of its 
government. All rational men acknowledged that the 
Union was imposed on Ireland by corrujit means, 
contrary to tlie wish of one generation. O'Connell was 
prepared to show, by the protest of the vast majority 
of the people, that it was retained without the acqui- 
escence of the next. He had allied himself with the 
parties that were rising surely and rapidly to power in 
England — with the democracy, whose gradual progress 
is effacing the most venerable landmarks of the con- 
stitution — with the Freetraders, whose approaching* 
triumph he had hailed and exulted in from afar. He 
had perceived the possibility of forming- a powerful 
party in Parliament, which would be free to co-operate 
with all English parties without coalescing with any, 
and might thus turn the balance of factions, and decide 
the fate of Ministries. He saw, too, that while England 
in a time of peace might resist the expressed will of 
the Irish nation, its policy would be necessarily 
U 



^ 



290 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



modified in time of war ; and be predicted that should 
there be a collision with France while the nation was 
organised as in '43, Eepeal would be the* immediate 
and the inevitable consequence. In a word, he believed 
that under a constitutional government the will of 
four-fifths of a nation, if peacefully, perseveringly, and 
energetically expressed, must sooner or later be tri- 
umphant. If a war had broken out during the agita- 
tion — if the life of O'Connell had been prolonged ten 
years longer — if any worthy successor had assumed his 
mantle — if a fearful famine had not broken the spirit 
of the people — who can say that the agitation would 
not have been successful ? Such a contest, however, 
was too great to be compressed into the closing years 
of a laborious life. 

But then we are met with the ready answer — the 
Eepeal rent was the object of the Eepeal agitation. 
For years this rent was the ceaseless subject of the 
ridicule of the writers of the British press, and place- 
men of every order declaimed in choicest periods on 
the iniquity of receiving money for political services. 
All this affected indignation appears to me, I confess, 
singularly ridiculous. To suppose that a vast move- 
ment, extending over nearly the whole surface of 
Ireland, sending its agents to every county and to 
every parish, exercising its influence upon every elec- 
tion, collecting stg,tistics, redressing wrongs, preparing 
petitions, and actively propagating its opinions, could 
be created and maintained without a regular tribute, 
is palpably absurd. The Eepeal rent was necessary 
for the maintenance of the organisation, and it was 
also the most imposing manifestation of its power. 
No equally efficacious means has ever been adopted 
of giving cohesion to a great political movement, of 
securing the sustained and intelligent co-operation of 



THE REPEAL EEMT. 291 

the people, of exhibiting beyond all question the 
extent and the intensity of the public feeling, and of 
proving its progressive character. To make O'Connell 
the recipient of the rent was the only means of making 
it thoroughly popular, and of preventing tliose disputes 
and recriminations that would have been so injurious 
to the cause. O'Connell was the idol of the nation. 
He had relinquished for its service a lucrative prac- 
tice at the Bar ; he had surrendered all hopes of 
promotion to the Bench, to which he would otherwise 
have undoubtedly attained, and where he might have 
spent his closing years in affluence and in dignified 
ease. His sacrifices, his position, and his genius ren- 
dered the tribute in the eyes of his supporters a fitting 
reward for his services, and a fitting testimonial of their 
affection. How faithfully it was expended his death 
sufficiently proved. Though he had been one of the 
most popular lawyers in Ireland when he practised at 
the Bar, and though he had inherited a considerable 
property from his uncle in 1825, he died broken in 
fortune as in spirits. Out of the princely revenue he 
had commanded he scarcely secured a competency for 
liis children. He had received it from the people's 
love — he spent it in the people's cause. 

To these considerations two answers are given. It 
is said that O'Connell lived in the most luxurious 
manner, keeping open house, and exercising the most 
unbounded hospitality, and that he also employed a 
large portion of the tribute in bringing his relations 
into Parliament. With reference to tlie first charge, 
it might be sufficient to say that a man whose life was 
spent for the most part in Herculean public labours 
Alight well be pardoned if, in the rare hours of relaxa- 
tion, he employed every possible means of stimulating 
and invigorating a mind jaded by excess of toil. But 



292 DA^'IEL O'CONNELL. 

there is a fuller answer than this. O'Connell was the 
leader of a great agitation. He had formed a system 
of government which he designed to exhibit as eclipsing 
the recognised government of Ireland. He was the 
centre of a vast movement wliich radiated over three 
provinces. For a man occupying such a position, 
keeping up intimate relations with so many politicians, 
and directing such various operations, great hospitality 
was absolutely necessary. No one ascribes the hospi- 
tality of the Prime Minister, or of any other political 
leader, to a spirit of self-indulgence. It is simply the 
necessity of their position. And with reference to the 
elevation of his relatives to Parliament, while there 
can be no doubt that it was gratifying to his feelings, 
it is by no means clear that it was injurious to his 
cause. His grand object, as a Parliamentary leader, 
compared with which every other became insignificant, 
was to inspire his party with perfect unanimity. In 
no conceivable way could he more fully effect that 
object than by bringing into Parliament men who 
were personally attached to himself. His followers 
were in general not very eminent or very higli-minded 
men, but it would be difficult to show any instance in 
wbich, by procuring the election of a relative, he ex- 
cluded a man of real ability. 

The career of O'Connell, during the Repeal move- 
ment, divides itself into two distinct parts — his Parlia- 
mentary life and his agitation in Ireland. He readily 
perceived that to bring the Eepeal question at once 
into Parliament would be extremely unwise. Parlia- 
ment is, in the first instance, always almost unanimous 
in opposing any radical change. It is only when the 
public opinion has been thorouglily gained, when the 
evils of resistance are shown to be greater than those 
which can flow from concession, and when the question 



REPEAL AGITATION. 293 

lias assumed an overwhelming magnitude, that the 
Parliamentary tide turns. Its change is then often 
both sudden and complete. O'Connell, perceiving 
this, determined to abstain from discussing the subject 
in Parliament, and resisted very resolutely the taunts 
by which the English members endeavoured to urge 
him to a division ; but a party in Ireland, represented 
by Feargus O'Connor and the ' Freeman's Journal,' 
argued so vehemently for a Parliamentary discussion 
that in 1834 he was at length compelled to yield. 
The result, as might have been easily anticipated, was 
an utter failure. Only one English member voted for 
Kepeal, and the majority against it amounted to nearly 
500. The division discouraged him greatly, and 
perhaps somewhat damped the ardour of the move- 
ment. 

The real importance however of the Pepeal move- 
ment was shown outside the walls of Parliament, and 
after the substitution of Sir 11. Peel for Lord Melbourne 
as Prime Minister. 8ir E. Peel, though one of the 
least fanatical, had been one of the most formidable 
adversaries of the Catholic claims. When Secretary 
for Ireland, his eulogies of the Orangemen and his 
exclusive promotion of anti-Catholics had earned for 
him the nickname of ' Orange Peel,' and he and 
O'Connell always regarded one another Avith intense 
enmity, both personal and political. He now declared 
that there was ' no iniluence, no power, no authority 
which the prerogative of the Crown and the existing 
laws gave the Government, that should not be ex- 
ercised for the purpose of maintaining the Union.' 
The Chancellor Sugden dismissed from the magis- 
tracy O'Connell and some other conspicuous Ee- 
pealers, and it was clearly understood that no one 
who held the obnoxious opinions had the slightest 



294 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



1 



chance of obtaining any office from the Govern- 
ment or any recognition of his talents at the Bar. 
Some young lawyers of promise selected this time for 
joining the movement, and the people, whose con- 
fidence in their leader was boundless, accepted the 
defiance with joyful alacrity. Ireland was indeed now 
fully prepared for the contest. There was no hesita- 
tion, no eclecticism manifest in any party. The lines 
of demarcation were clearly drawn. Those vacillating 
and equivocal characters who were compared by 
O'Connell to the monsters in the ' Arabian Nights ' 
with green backs and orange tails had nearly all dis- 
appeared. The organisation of the Kepealers had been 
elaborated almost to perfection, and had attained its 
full dimensions. The Repeal Society consisted of three 
classes — the volunteers who subscribed or collected 
lOl. a year, the members who subscribed IL, the asso- 
ciates who subscribed Is. The rents were collected by 
the instrumentality of the clergy. The unity of the 
organisation was maintained by Repeal wardens, under 
the direction of O'Connell, who presided over assigned 
districts. The exertions of the society were directed 
to the extension of Repeal influence at the elections, 
to the preparation of petitions, and to the assemblage 
of monster meetings. 

O'Connell, after a time, devoted himself almost 
exclusively to the agitation in Ireland, and in 1843, 
the year of the monster meetings, he abstained alto- 
gether from Parliamentary duties. During this year 
he occupied perhaps the pinnacle of his glory. There 
are three great instances on record of politicians, dis- 
couraged by overwhelming majorities, seceding from 
Parliament. Grattan gave up his seat and became 
utterly powerless in the country. Fox retired from 
the debate, though retaining his seat, and he too 



MONSTER MEETINGS. 295 

became for a time little m.ore than a cipher. O'Con- 
nell followed the example of Fox, but he drew with 
him the attention of Europe. In no previous portion 
of liis career, not even when he had gained eman- 
cipation from the humbled Ministry of Wellington, 
did he attract greater attention or admiration. Who- 
ever turns over the magazines or newspapers of the 
period will easily perceive how grandly his figure 
dominated in politics, how completely he had dispelled 
the indifference that had so long prevailed on Idsh 
questions, how clearly his agitation stands forth as the 
great fact of the time. 

It would be difficult, indeed, to conceive a more 
imposing demonstration of public oioinion than was 
furnished by those vast assemblies which were held 
in every Catholic county, and attended by almost 
every adult male. They usually took place upon 
Sunday morning, in the open air, upon some hillside. At 
daybreak the mighty throng might be seen, broken into 
detached groups and kneeling on the greensward around 
their priests, while the incense rose from a hundred 
rude altars, and the solemn music of the Mass floated 
upon the gale, and seemed to impart a consecration to 
the cause. O'Connell stood upon a platform, sui-rounded 
by the ecclesiastical dignitaries and by the more dis- 
tinguished of his followers. Before him that immense 
assembly was ranged without disorder, or tumult, or 
difficulty ; organised with the most perfect skill, and 
inspired with the most unanimous enthusiasm. There 
is, perhaps, no more impressive spectacle than such an 
assembly, pervaded by such a spirit, and moving under 
the control of a single mind. The silence that pre- 
vailed through its whole extent during some portions 
of his address ; the concordant cheer bursting from 
tens of thousands of voices ; the rapid transitions of 



296 DANIEL O'CONHELL. 



n 



feeling as the great magician struck alternately each 
chord of passion, and as the power of sympathy, acting 
and reacting by the well-known law, intensified the 
prevailing feeling, were sufficient to carry away the 
most calloiis, and to influence the most prejudiced ; 
the critic, in the contagious enthusiasm, almost forgot 
liis art, and men of veiy calm and disciplined intel- 
lects experienced emotions the most stately eloquence 
of the senate had failed to produce.' 

The greatest of all these meetings, perhaps the 
grandest display of the kind that has ever taken place, 
was held around the Hill of Tarah. According to very 
moderate computations, about a quarter of a million 
were assembled there to attest their sympathy with the 
movement. The spot was well chosen for the purpose. 
Tarah of the Kings, the seat of the ancient royalty of 
Ireland, has ever been regarded by tlie Irish people with 

' The following is Buhver's description of the scene : 

Once to my sight the giant thus was given, 

Walled by wide air and roofed by boundless heaven : 

Beneath his feet the human ocean lay, 

And wave on wave flowed into space away. 

Methought no clarion could have sent its sound 

E'en to the centre of the hosts around ; 

And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell. 

As fi-om some church-tower swings the silvery bell 

Aloft and clear from airy tide to tide 

It glided easy, as a bird may glide. 

To the last verge of that vast audience sent, 

It played with each wild passion as it went : 

Now stirred the uproar — now the murmurs stilled, 

And sobs or laughter answered as it willed. 

Then did I know what spells of infinite choice 

To rouse or lull has the sweet human voice. 

Then did I learn to seize the sudden clue 

To the grand troublous life antique — to view 

Under the rock-stand of Demosthenes 

Unstable Athens heave her noisy seas. — St. Stephens. 



MONSTER MEETINGS. 297 

sometbing of a superstitious awe. The vague legends 
tliat cluster around it, the poetry that has consecrated 
its past, and the massive relics of its ancient greatness 
tliat have been from time to time discovered, have 
invested it with an ineffable and a most fascinat- 
ing grandeur. It was on this spot that O'Connell, 
standing by the stone where the Kings of Ireland 
were once crowned, sketched the coming glories of 
his country. Beneath him, like a mighty sea, extended 
the throng of listeners. They were so numerous that 
thousands were vmable to catch the faintest echo 
of the voice they loved so well ; yet all remained 
passive, tranquil, and decorous. In no instance did 
these meeting.s degenerate into mobs. They were 
assembled, and they were dispersed, without disorder 
or tumult ; they were disgraced by no drunkenness, by 
no crime, by no excess. When the Government, in 
the State trials, applied the most searching scrutiny, 
they could discover nothing worse than that on one 
occasion the retiring crowd trampled down the stall of 
an old woman who sold gingerbread. 

This absence of disorder was partly owing to the 
influence of O'Connell, and partly to that of Father 
Mathew. The extraordinary career of that wonderful 
man was at this time at its height, and Teetotalism 
was nearly as popular as Kepeal. The two movements 
mutually assisted one another, and advanced together. 
The splendid success of Father Mathew was probably 
owing in a great measure to the fact that O'Connell 
had strung the minds of the people to a pitch of 
almost heroic enthusiasm ; and, on the other hand, 
O'Connell declared that he would never have ventm-ed 
to hold the monster meetings were it not that he had 
the Teetotallers ' for his policemen.' There was scarcely 
a Catholic county where these meetings were not held, 



298 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

and those who attended them have been reckoned 
by millions. 

In the same year a very remarkable evidence was 
furnished of the extent to which the Repeal opinions 
were held by the intellect of the country in tlie creation 
of the ' Nation ' newspaper. I knoAV few more melan- 
choly spectacles — no more mournful illustration of the 
declension of the national party in Ireland than is 
furnished by the contrast between the present of that 
paper and its past. What it is now it is needless to 
say. What it was when Gravan Dufifey edited it — when 
Davis, Macarthy, and all their brilliant companions 
contributed to it, and when its columns maintained 
with unqualified zeal the cause of liberty and nationality 
in every land, Irishmen can never forget. 

And over all this vast movement O'Connell at this 
time reigned supreme. There was no rival to his 
supremacy — there was no restriction to his authority. 
He played with tlie fierce enthusiasm he had aroused 
with the negligent ease of a master ; he governed the 
complicated organisation he had created with a sagacity 
that never failed. He had made himself the focus of 
the attention of other lands, and the centre around 
which the rising intellect of his own revolved. He had 
transformed the whole social system of Ireland ; almost 
reversed the relative positions of Protestants and Roman 
Catholics ; remodelled by his influence the representa- 
tive, the ecclesiastical, the educational institutions, 
and created a public opinion that surpassed the wildest 
dreams of his predecessors. Can we wonder at the 
proud exultation with which he exclaimed, ' Grrattan 
sat by the cradle of his country, and followed her 
hearse : -it was left for me to sound the resurrection 
trumpet, and to show that she was not dead, but 
sleeping ' ? 



NOT A MERE DEMAGOGUE. 299 

Among the popular methods of depreciating the 
intellect of O'Connell, one of the principal has been to 
i-epresent him simply as a member of a very numerous 
and a very much despised class, who are known by the 
name of demagogues. Now, if by a demagogue is 
understood a man who is merely an adept in mob- 
orator}^, whose life is spent in pandering to the passions 
of the populace, in following and in interpreting their 
follies, and in advocating the extreme opinions they 
delight in, it is quite true that such a character is a 
contemptible one, but equally true that it does not 
apply to O'Connell. The truth is, that the position of 
O'Connell, so far from being a common one, is abso- 
lutely unique in history. There have been many 
greater men, but there is no one with whom he com- 
pares disadvantageously, for he stands alone in his 
sphere. We may search in vain through the records 
of the past for any man who, without the effusion of a 
drop of blood, or the advantages of office or rank, 
succeeded in governing a people so absolutely and so 
long, and in creating so entirely the elements of his 
power. A king without rebellion, with his tribute, 
his government, and his deputies, he at once evaded 
the meshes of the law and restrained the passions of 
the people. He possessed to the highest degree the 
eloquence and the adroitness of a demagogue, but he 
possessed also all the sagacity of a statesman and not 
a little of the independence of a patriot. He yielded 
frequently to the wishes of the people and to the 
passions around him, but on points which he deemed 
important he was quite capable of resisting them. 
He believed the poor-laws to be erroneous in their 
principle and demoralising in .their action, and he 
opposed them on the most unpopular grounds, 
though Dr. Doyle, the ablest and most popular of 



300 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the Eoman Catholic prelates, had come fonvard to 
advocate them. He rejected without hesitation the 
proffered alliance of the Chartists, though Englishmen 
of almost every other class were inveighing against 
him. He was extremely anxious to obtain the sympathy 
and support of American public opinion, but he did 
not hesitate mortally to offend a large section of the 
American people by the zeal with which he threw 
himself into the cause of negro emancipation, and by 
his fiery denunciations of slavery. He strongly cen- 
sured the existing system of insecure tenancies, and 
anticipated very accurately the Bill which has recently 
passed, saying, on one occasion, that ' nothing will do 
but giving some kind of fixity of tenure to the occupier, 
and especially an absolute right of recompense for all 
substantial improvements.' But, although he often 
used very violent and veiy unjustifiable language 
towards individual landlords, he never encouraged 
those socialistic notions about land which since his 
death have been so prevalent ; and he never forgave 
Arthur O'Connor for having, as he heard, a plan for 
the equal division of land.' He regarded strikes as one 
of the curses of the country, and in 1838, when they 
Avere very prevalent in Ireland, and were supported by 
numbers of his followers, he was among the most pro- 
minent of those who denounced them. On this occa- 
sion he seriously imperilled his influence. He was 
scarcely able to obtain a hearing at a meeting he 
attended. He was hooted through the streets of 
Dublin, but he never shrank from warning the people 
against those combinations, and he succeeded for a time 
in putting them down in Ireland. 

' See O'Ntil Daxint's ' Personal Recollections of O'Connell,' vol. i, 
p. 50; vol. ii. p. 232. 



mS LOVE OF PEACE. 301 

But the noblest instance of his moderation is fur- 
nished by his constant denunciations of rebellion. An 
orator Avho sought only for popularity in addressing so 
bellicose a people as the Irish would have dwelt con- 
stantly on the verge of treason, and have continually 
dilated upon the glories of the battle-field. O'Con- 
nell, on the other hand, uniformly warned the people 
against appealing to arms. He exhausted all his elo- 
quence in contrasting the advantages of constitutional 
agitation with the horrors of war, and exhibited at all 
times, both in public and in private conversations, an 
almost Quaker detestation of force. Perhaps no higher 
tribute has ever been paid him than that of Mr. Mit- 
chell, who declared that, next to the British Govern- 
ment, he regarded O'Connell as the greatest enemy of 
Ireland ; for it was altogether owing to his eloquence 
and to his principles that the Irish people could not be 
induced to follow the revolutionary movement of 1848. 
He infused into them a touching faith in the power 
of peaceful agitation, which unhappily did not survive 
his defeat. He proclaimed himself the first apostle 
of that sect whose first doctrine was, that no political 
change was wortli shedding a drop of blood, and that 
all might be attained by moral force ; and he con- 
fidently looked forward to the time when the might of 
public opinion would prove invariably triumphant in 
political struggles. As one of the poets of the move- 
ment wrote : 

When the Lord created the earth and the sea, 

The stars, and the glorious sun, 
The Godhead fijwJce, and the universe woke. 

And the mighty work was done ! 
Let a word be flung from the orator's tongue, 

Or a drop from the fearless pen, 
And the chains accurst asunder bui-st 

That fettered the minds of men. 



302 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Oh! these are the arms with which we fight, 

The swords in which we trust, 
"Which no tyrant hand shall dare to brand, 

Which time cannot stain or rust. 
When these we bore we triumphed before, 

With these we'll triumph again, 
And the world shall say no power can stay 

Tho Toice or the fearless pen.' 

The system of gigantic, organised agitation for poli- 
tical ends which he devised was a discovery in politics, 
and the example was speedily followed in England, and 
tended very powerfully to discredit the conspiracies 
and riots to which the unrepresented classes had long 
been prone. The Corn-Law League, which obtained 
for England the blessing of free trade, was in a great 
degree an imitation of the Catholic Association of 
O'Connell. 

That the outrageous language he sometimes em- 
ployed, his liabitual use of the term Saxon instead of 
Englishman, and his frequent recurrence to the worst 
episodes of the past history of Ireland contributed 
much to separate the two nations is undoubted ; but it 
must be added that, while his influence lasted, there 
was none of that malignant type of disloyalty which 
has since then been so common. The people were 
anti-English because of the Union or the Protestant 
ascendency, but they always retained a kind of re- 
versionary loyalty, and looked forward, when their 
grievances were redressed, to a cordial union with 
England. It must be added, too, that O'Connell 
always drew a broad line of distinction between the 

' Maearthy. Contrast the lines of the Young Ireland poet Davis : 

Tho tribune's tongue or poet's pen 

May sow the seed in prostrate men, 
Bu>t 'tis the soldier's sword alone 

Can reap the harvest when "tis grown. 



niS RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE. 303 

Sovereign and her Ministers, and there was probably 
no period of his agitation in which the Queen would 
not have been received with enthusiasm in Ireland. 
If the measures which he adopted were often very 
culpable, the great end of his politics will now be very 
generally admitted to have been good. His advocacy 
of imiversal suffrage, his crusade against the House of 
Lords, his ferocious denunciations of the upper classes 
of his fellow-countrymen, perhaps even his agitation 
for Repeal, were all means to an end — that end being 
the elevation of the Catholics from a pariah class into 
a position of equality with the Protestants. That 
policy has since been fully carried out. No one will 
now defend the old system of tithes, and few will 
question that the Appropriation Clause was just. 
The Church policy, which was thought so extravagant 
in 1833, has been carried out in 1869 with a severity 
which O'Connell never advocated, and the security of 
tenure which O'Connell claimed for the Irish tenant 
has been amply provided by the Land Bill of 1870. 

Nor can O'Connell be justly regarded as the mere 
tool of the clergy. It is true that he first brought 
them into the political arena and governed by their 
means, but he was invariably tlie director of their 
policy. He refused emphatically to submit to be 
dictated to by his spiritual advisers. ' We are Eoman 
Catholics,' he once said, ' but not servants of Eome ; ' 
and he fully echoed the words of his secretary, ' As 
much theology as you please from Rome, but no poli- 
tics.' Though he was passionately attached to his 
own religion, and on most subjects very little apt to 
restrain his invective, it would be difficult or im- 
possible to find a single instance in which he used 
offensive language against Protestants as such. Though 
pei'petually confronted with the grossest Puritan 



304 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

bigotry, he exhibited himself a steady and large- 
minded tolerance for every form of religious belief, 
that raised him immeasurably above his Protestant 
adversaries. ' In plain truth,' he said, in language 
which there is every reason to believe expressed his 
deepest conviction, 'every religion is good — every 
religion is true to him who in his due caution and 
conscience believes it. There is but one bad religion, 
that of a man who professes a faith which he does not 
believe ; but the good religion may be, and often is, 
corrupted by the wretched and wicked prejudices 
which admit a difference of opinion as a ca\ase of 
hatred.' He continually laboured in the spirit of 
Grattan and O'Leary to allay the religious discord of 
his countrymen, accepted cordially every overture 
made to him by Protestants, advocated the cause of 
religious liberty in every quarter, and alone, of all 
prominent Koman Catholics, succeeded in making 
himself through his whole life the champion of the 
Church, and at the same time a consistent leader of 
the most advanced Liberal party. It is this aspect 
of his career which seems to have most struck Conti- 
nental writers, and to have made him ' a representative 
man ' in his Church. 

The struggle against the Church of Eome in the 
present day is not strictly theological. Its real 
adversary is no longer the Protestant divine, nor are 
the weapons of the controversy those of dogmatic 
polemics. A new method and severity of historical 
criticism, by sapping the authority of the Church, and 
a series of momentous scientific discoveries, by 
familiarising men with anti-theological conceptions of 
the nature and government of the universe, are gra- 
dually loosening its hold upon the minds of men, 
while at the same time its power is immeasurably 



HIS SEEVICES TO CATHOLICISM. 305 

diminished by a great political change. The theo- 
logical doctrine of the Divine right of kings was the 
basis of the government of Catholic Europe, bvit since 
the P^rench Revolution this theological basis has been 
generally repudiated, the whole sphere of politics is 
fast passing beyond the empire of the Church, the 
government of a great part of Eiu'ope rests upon 
principles which she cannot approve, and the sym- 
pathies of the people are in habitual opposition to 
those of the priests. The great Liberal party that 
ramifies over nearly the whole of Europe, and advances 
side by side with education and social progress, is in 
open or disguised antagonism to the Church, and, as 
its triumph becomes every year more certain, the 
priestly power is waning rapidly in lands where the 
doctrines of Protestantism are imknown. It was the 
work of O'Connell to make tho Liberal party, in 
Ireland at least, synonymous with the Catholic party. 
By drawing clearly the distinction between rebellion 
which the Church condemns, and agitation which it 
does not condemn ; by advocating in Parliament the 
cause of every oppressed nationality ; by claiming 
religious equality for the Dissenters as well as for his 
co-religionists ; by allying himself with the most 
advanced democrats ; and, above all, by making his 
cause essentially national, he succeeded in becoming 
at once the greatest Catholic and one of the greatest 
Liberals of his age. Three or four of the most gifted 
intellects of France were engaged at the same time, 
though with very indifferent success, in advocating 
this alliance, and they regarded O'Connell as their 
great model and representative. On this ground three 
of the most eloquent men on the Continent — Mont- 
alembert, Ventura, and Lacordaire — have made him tlie 
subject of the most splendid eulogy. The attempt to 



306 DANIEL 0'C0N^^ELL. 

make the Catholic priesthood the representatives of 
sincere Liberalism has, as might have been expected, 
proved ultimately hopeless ; but if O'Connell did not 
ally his cause permanently with Liberalism abroad, he 
at least succeeded in identifying it with Nationalism at 
home. He contrived to place the Protestant clergy in 
direct opposition to the sympathies of the people, to 
neutralise all the good effect of the Liberalism of 
Grattan or Curran, and thus to raise a formidable 
rampart around his Church. Eeligious doctrines with 
great masses of men depend very little for their ac- 
ceptance on the unbiassed judgment of the intellect, 
and very much upon the sympathy and the esteem 
inspired by their teachers, and a Church which has 
sold the birthright will never obtain the blessing. 
The Irish Protestant Church, accepting the position of 
an English garrison in an enemy's country, supporting 
for the most part a policy of restriction and disquali- 
fication, and opposing the national aspirations of the 
people, has occupied a position very similar to that of 
the Papacy in Italy, while in Ireland, as in Poland 
and in Spain, Catholicism has derived an incalculable 
force from being the symbol of national feeling. It is 
probable, however, that this situation will gradually 
be modified. Eecent measures of disestablishment 
and disendowment, by depriving the Protestant 
Church of all the privileges it derived from the State, 
have destroyed its invidious and exceptional position, 
and removed a chief obstacle to an Irish policy on the 
part of its members, while among the Catholic priests 
Ultramontanism is becoming more and more ascendant, 
and their policy is, in consequence, more and more 
evidently subservient to foreign dictation. 

With the great qualities of O'Connell there were 
mingled great defects, which I have not attempted to 



niS DEFECTS. 307 

conceal, and which arc of a kind peculiarly repulsive 
to a refined and lofty nature. His character was 
essentially that of a Celtic peasant. Though he was 
the representative of an old family, and though he had 
received a good education in France, he exhibited to 
a singular degree the characteristic faults of an 
uneducated man — coarseness, scurrility, cunning, a 
power of passing on the slightest occasion from the 
extreme of flattery to the extreme of abuse, a looseness 
of statement which is not altogether explained by the 
natural exaggeration of the Celtic mind. Of the 
faults of taste into which he could fall, and the 
manner in which he could expose himself to ridicule, 
it is sufficient to say that in 1838 he published a letter 
describing himself as having, during a sleepless night, 
cried bitterly in bed because Lord J. Eussell had 
refused to adopt the ballot. The dedication to the 
Queen of his memoir on the past atrocities of English 
Grovernments in Ireland is written in a strain of 
bombast that would disgrace the pen of the editor of 
a country newspaper ; and there are many things in his 
other writings and in his speeches which are equally 
puerile. As was almost inevitable from his mode of 
life, his faults grew upon him with age. Perpetually 
speaking before crowds of uneducated men, and per- 
petually breathing the atmosphere of the most vulgar 
flattery, his intellect and character were alike lowered. 
It is indeed a grave, though a common error, to judge 
speeches addressed to an uneducated audience by the 
canons of a refined taste ; for a great orator will always 
adapt his style to his audience, and will know that 
coarse humour, or florid imagery, or claptrap declama- 
tion may affect some classes more than all the elo- 
quence of Demosthenes ; but when all due allowance is 
made for this, it remains true that the language of 



308 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

O'Connell lowered the tone of public opinion in Ireland, 
and the character of the nation in the eyes of the 
world. He represented, played upon, and strengthened 
some of the worst defects of the Irish nature, and 
there was very little that was either manly or dignified 
in his later oratory. At the same time, his violence 
was sometimes almost ungovernable. He often com- 
plained with justice of landlord intimidation as applied 
to voters, but it would be difficult or impossible to 
find instances of more scandalous intimidation than 
was practised by his followers at his instigation in 
1835;^ and the language he habitually employed 
towards his opponents gave a bitterness .to political 
controversy in Ireland which it had never before 
attained. One of the most hopeful circumstances in 
the present condition of the coimtry is that the gene- 
ration is fast passing away which rose to manhood 
during his agitation. Few generations of Irishmen 
have exhibited so little real genius. None has been so 
profoundly divided by sectarian and party hatred. 

The result of his career was in another way pro- 
foundly injurious to the country. The main object 
of the legislative Union had been to withdraw the 
Government of Ireland from the hands of the Irish 
gentry, and one of its most important results was to 
diminish their influence as the political leaders of the 
people. By a singular fatality, the great advocate of 
Repeal continued this policy, and thus did more than 
anyone else to make the Union a necessity. From the 
beginning of his career, when he crushed the influence 
of the leading Irish lay Catholics on the question of 
the Veto, to the end of his struggle for Repeal, he 
was continually employed in breaking or weakening 

' See the 'Annual Kegister,' 1835, p. 15. 



DIYISION OF CLASSES HE PRODLX'En. 309 

the landed classes, in dispelling the feudal reverence 
of the people, and in making the priests their political 
leaders. In the case of individual landlords, indeed, 
he often showed himself anxious to conciliate, and even 
fulsome in his adulation,^ but he destroyed the sym- 
pathy between the people and their natural leaders ; 
and he threw the former into the hands of men who 
have subordinated all national to ecclesiastical con- 
siderations, or into the hands of reckless, ignorant, and 
dishonest adventurers. If the people and the possessors 
of property in Ireland were now cordially united they 
could obtain any measure of self-government they 
desired, and the Ultramontane policy dictated by the 
priesthood, and the wild socialistic follies of Fenianism, 
are the chief obstacles to its attainment. No truths 
can be more obvious than that a cordial union between 
Irishmen of all creeds is the first condition of political 
progress in Ireland, and that a demand for any measure 
of self-government must rest upon the doctrine that 
tlie public opinion of a country should determine tbe 
form of its government ; but one section of the popular 
leaders in Ireland are now straining every nerve to 
break down the system of united education, which is 
the best hope for the future of their country, and to 
incline the foreign policy of the empire to the side of 
everything that is anti-Liberal on the Continent, while 
another section are advocating doctrines subversive of 
those fundamental rights of property which it is a main 
end of all government to secure, and a policy of 
rebellion which, if it could be realised, could be 
realised only at the expense of a massacre of their 

' The reader may find some curious instances of this in hord Clon- 
curry's 'Personal Kecollections.' It was a very characteristic saying of 
O'Connell that ' you may catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than 
with a hogshead of vinegar.' 



310 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

fellow-countrymen. If at the present moment the an- 
tagonism of classes and creeds is stronger in Ireland 
than in any other country in Europe — if there is no 
part of the empire in which genuine, modest, and 
manly talent is so little appreciated by constituencies, 
and in wliich the demagogue and the adventurer can 
find so favourable a field — this is to be mainly attri- 
buted to the policy of Pitt, and to the agitation of 
O'Connell. By grave faults on both sides the natural 
ties that united classes have been broken, and until 
they, are in some degree formed anew there is never 
likely to be a consistent and successful national policy 
in Ireland. 

I have dwelt at considerable length upon the faults 
and merits of O'Connell, for the position I would 
venture to assign him is much higher tlian that which 
is usually conceded him in England, and tliere are 
few men who are estimated more differently in England 
and on the Continent. It is impossible to judge his 
position without taking into account tlie place he 
occupied with reference to the progressive party in his 
Church, and the depreciatory tone adopted by his 
many enemies has naturally made a deep impression 
on the public mind. There is also a constant tendency 
— especially among intellectual people — to underrate 
those whose genius is employed chiefly in action, 
especially when the lower orders are subjects of that 
action. 

If I were asked to point out a personage in history 
who in intellectual and moral temperament bore a 
striking resemblance to O'Connell, I should select one 
who differed from him in principles as widely as any 
that could be named, and who has played a far greater 
and far nobler part in the affairs of men— I mean 
Martin Luther. There is something in the very 



COMPARED WITH LUTHER. 311 

appearance of these men exhibiting the same nature — 
a nature of indomitable strength, genial rather than 
refined, massive and precious, but somewhat coarse- 
grained. In each, character and intellect so happily 
harmonised that it were hard to say how much their 
success was due to force of will, and how much to 
force of mind. In each was the same instinctive tact 
in governing great masses of men, the same calculated 
audacity, the same intuitive perception of opportunities, 
the same art in inspiring and in retaining confidence. 
Each displayed an eloquence of the most popular 
character, nervous, pointed, but incorrect ; thrilling 
and fascinating, by the glow of feeling that pervaded 
it ; repelling and irritating, by the coarseness, the 
vituperation, the vulgarity into which it degenerated. 
Each was associated with men of purer intellectuality 
and more heroic enthusiasm, yet each, if measured by 
his achievements, towers above all his associates. Neither 
can be judged fairly by a microscopic and a detailed 
criticism. It is easy to detect acts that cannot be 
justified, language that can scarcely be palliated, in- 
consistencies that it is difficult to explain. But, though 
their opponents will never be at a loss for subject- 
matter for their attacks, though their admirers will 
always find much that they must deeply deplore, and 
though the sentimentalist will turn with disgust from 
men in whose temperaments the grosser elements so 
largely mingled, yet the stamp of true genius is upon 
both, and the aureole that marks those who have 
laboured faithfully for mankind will ever circle their 
memories. The magnitude and the unity of their 
lives become only visible when distance has enabled 
the eye to discover their full proportions, and when 
experience has shown how miserable were the efforts of 
their successors to wield their sceptres. Nay, in the 



312 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

very inequalities of their tempers there is much to 
attract sympathy. Luther, hurling his tmmeasured 
invective against some royal opponent, and then pour- 
ino; out a strain of the gentlest tenderness over his 
child — O'Connell, listening with calm complacency to 
the crowd of orators who * were advertising ' him by 
their denunciations, yet galled to the quick by the 
sarcasm of an old friend — present a resemblance as 
pleasing as it is striking. Both were men of powerful 
intellects and of warm hearts, and both, with great 
though unequal faults, laboured with a firm faith to 
realise objects which they believed to be good.' 

The Government was extremely alarmed at the 
success of the monster meetings, and they at length 
determined by a bold measure to crush the agitation. 
A meeting had been advertised for Sunday, October 3, 
1843, to be held at Clontarf. It would have been pro- 
bably one of the very greatest of the series, for Clon- 
tarf is in the immediate vicinity of Dublin. The 
meeting had been announced about a fprtnight before. 
The Government took no notice of it till the afternoon 
of the 2nd, when the roads were thronged with the 
excited populace, who had come from a distance to 
attend it, and a proclamation was then issued forbidding- 
it. It is said that the cannon of ' the Pigeon-house ' 
were actually turned upon Clontai-f. The natural con- 
sequence of this proceeding of the Government of Sir 
E. Peel would have been a breach of the peace and 
a massacre more sanguinary than that of Mancheste]-, 
and this would almost certainly have taken place but 

' ' Oh for a great man,' said Coleridge, ' but one really great man, 
who could feel the weight and the power of a principle, and unflinch- 
ingly put it into act ! See how triumphant in debate and action 
O'Connell is. Why ? Because he asserts a broad principle, and acts 
up to, rests all his body on ir, and has faith in it." — Table Talk. 



HIS TRTAI.. 313 

for the extraordinary promptitude of O'Connell. He 
at once despatched messengers in all directions to 
apprise the people, and by exerting- all his wonderful 
influence induced them peaceably to disperse. 

The Government prosecution followed close on tlie 
proclamation. It was a charge of conspiracy, or, in 
other words, of the employment of seditious language, 
against O'Connell, his son, and five of his principal 
followers. The trial was extremely protracted ; but its 
monotony was relieved by much brilliant oratory, by a 
great deal of very curious cross-examination, and by 
an amusing episode occasioned by the Attorney-General, 
who sent a challenge to one of the opposing counsel, 
which that gentleman submitted to the Bench. The 
two most eloquent speeches delivered were beyond all 
question those of Shell and Mr. Whiteside. A great 
number of charges have been brouglit against this trial 
which have elicited much controversy. It is sufficient to 
state the facts that are admitted. An error, which at 
least one Irish judge believed not to have been unin- 
tentional, was made in the panel of the jury, and by 
this error more than twenty Catholics were excluded 
from the juror list. Of the Catholics whose names 
were called all were objected to by the Government 
prosecutor, and accordingly there was not a single 
Roman Catholic on the jury which tried the greatest 
Catholic of his age in the metropolis of an essenti- 
ally Catholic country, and at a time when sectarian 
animosity was at its .height. After a charge from the 
Cliief Justice which Macaulay afterwards compared to 
the displays of judicial partisanship in the State trials 
of Charles II., O'Connell was found guilty, and con- 
demned to two years' imprisonment, together with 
a fine — a sentence against which he appealed to the 
Lords. 

15 



314 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Some months elapsed before the appeal could be 
heard, and during the earlier part of that time O'Connell 
was in great, though, as it proved, needless alarm, lest 
the people should have broken into open rebellion. 
He despatched from prison the most emphatic addresses, 
exhorting them to tranquillity, and he soon found that 
they were quite willing to respond to his appeal. Their 
reception of the Government prosecution was very 
striking. They remained perfectly tranquil ; but the 
rent, which in the fourteen weeks before the trial had 
been 6,67 9^., rose in the fourteen weeks that followed 
it to 25,712^. In the first week it was nearly 2,600L 

At the beginning of the trial, Mr. Smith O'Brien 
gave for the first time his formal adhesion to the 
movement, and, during the imprisonment of O'Connell, 
the leadersliip of the party devolved upon him. 
Though very deficient, both in oratorical abilities and 
in judgment, he obtained great weight with the people 
from the charm that ever hangs around a chivalrous 
and polished gentleman, and from the transparent 
purity of a patriotism on which suspicion has never 
rested ; and he was also a skilful and a ready writer. 
Of the wisdom he displayed in one unhappy episode of 
his career there are not likely to be two opinions, but 
it should not be forgotten that it was the ceaseless 
labour of his life to inculcate the importance of self- 
reliance, to dissociate the national cause from the 
claptrap and the bombast by which it was so frequently 
disfigured, and to teach the people that Liberal poli- 
tics are only truly adopted wben they are applied 
without respect of persons and Avithout fear of conse- 
quences. It was thus that he laboured during the 
lifetime of O'Connell to check the place-hunting and 
the boastiog that disgraced the Eepeal cause, and that 
near the close of his life he calmly and fearlessly 



REVERSAL OF HIS SENTENCE. 315 

risked all the popularity which years of suffering had 
g-ained him, by opposing those who sought to identify 
Irish Liberalism with Italian despotism, and to draw 
down upon their country the horrors of a French 
invasion. Few politicians have sacrificed more to 
what they believed to be right, and the invariable 
integrity of his motives has more than redeemed the 
errors of his judgment. 

The appeal to the House of Lords was heard in 
September 1844. On occasions of this kind, when the 
House sits to review the decisions of the law courts, 
it is customary to leave the matter entirely in the 
hands of the Law Lords, and the permanent mainte- 
nance of the judicial authority of tlie House obviously 
depends upon the observance of this custom ; but there 
have been instances in which Lay Lords have taken part 
in the decision.' O'Connell had ahvays been the bitter 
enemy of the House of Lords. He had inveighed 
against it in the grossest terms. He had given many 
of its members cause for the deepest personal animosity. 
When the appeal was to be heard, a number of Lay 
Lords came down to the House to vote against him. 
The five Law Lords, who were present, first delivered 
their opinions — two of them confirming the sentence 
of the Irish court, three of them condemning it. Lord 
Denman, in the course of his judgment, stigmatised 
the proceedings in Ireland in the strongest language. 
When the Law Lords had delivered their judgment, 
Lord Wharncliffe rose and appealed to the other 
members of the House not to permit their personal 
or political feelings to influence a judicial sentence. 
The appeal struck the right chord. The high and 
honourable feeling that has almost always characterised 
the House of Lords reasserted its sway. Every Lay 

' E.g. in the famous Douglass case in 1769. 



316 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Lord left the House, and their bitterest living enemy 
"was freed by their forbearance. 

The news of the reversal of the sentence was re- 
ceived in Ireland with a burst of the most enthusiastic 
acclamations — bonfires blazed over the country — 
O'Connell passed through the streets of Dublin in a 
triumphal procession. A perfect delirium of excite- 
ment prevailed among his followers ; yet, notwith- 
standing these ebullitions, the spell of his power was 
in a great measure broken. It was said that the 
months of imprisonment he had undergone had shat- 
tered his health and impaired his energies. For the 
iirst time for many years, serious dissensions arose 
among his followers. The Young Ireland party exer- 
cised considerable influence, and appeared to exercise 
far more from the great talent it displayed. The 
' Xation ' newspaper espoused its cause. It possessed 
also one very brilliant orator, Thomas Francis Meagher, 
a young man whose eloquence was beyond comparison 
superior to that of any other rising speaker in the 
country, and who, had he been placed in circumstances 
favourable to the development of his talent, might 
perhaps have at length taken his place among the 
great orators of Ireland. The Young Irelanders, like 
the leaders in the Eebellion of 1798, were chiefly 
Protestants — very young, and very enthusiastic men. 
They differed in the first place from O'Connell on the 
question, whether Eepealers should accept ofiices or 
promotion from the Government. They argued that 
those who had done so had invariably abandoned the 
cause — that a place-hunting spirit had crept into the 
society — that the sordid and corrupt element it pro- 
duced was actually very great, and the discredit and 
suspicion it attracted much greater. On the other 
hand, O'Connell maintained that some concessions were 



THE YOUNG IRELANDERS. 317 

necessary to the maintenance of the movement in its 
full extent — that the possession of place was the pos- 
session of power, and that it would be peculiarly in- 
consistent in Repealers to refuse it, because one of 
their great grievances had always been that the 
Grovernment uniformly confined its bounties to their 
opponents. But the great characteristic of the Young 
Ireland party was its advocacy of rebellion. It was 
far more independent of the priests than O'Connell, 
and was little swayed by theological censures, and its 
sympathies were more with 1798 than with 1782. It 
was thus (to take but one instance from many) that 
Meagher declared in one of his speeches, ' There are 
but two plans for our consideration — the one within 
the law, the other without the law. Let us take the 
latter. I will then ask you, Is an insurrection practi- 
cable ? Prove to me that it is, and I for one will vote 
for it this very night. You know well, my friends, 
that I am not one of those tame moralists who say that 
liberty is not worth a drop of blood. Men who sub- 
scribe to sucli a maxim are fit for out-of-door relief, 
and for nothing better. Against this miserable maxim 
the noblest virtue that has saved and sanctified hu- 
manity appears in judgment. From the blue waters 
of the Bay of Salamis — from the valley over which the 
sun stood still and lit the Israelites to victory — from 
the cathedral in which the sword of Poland has been 
sheathed in the shroud of Kosciusko — from the convent 
of St. Isidore, where the fiery hand that rent the 
ensign of St. George upon the plains of Ulster has 
crumbled into dust — from the sands of the desert, 
where the wild genius of the Algerine so long has 
scared the eagle of the Pyrenees — from the ducal 
palace in this kingdom, where the memory of the 
gallant Greraldine enhances more than royal favom' 



318 DANIEL O'CONN'ELL. 

the nobility of his race — from the solitary grave within 
this mute city which a dying request has left without 
an epitaph — oh ! from every spot where heroism has 
had a sacrifice or a triumph, a voice breaks in upon 
the cringing crowd that cherishes this maxim, crying 
out. Away with it ! away with it ! ' 

It will be remembered that the maxim thus de- 
nounced was one which O'Connell lost no opportunity 
of extolling. 

The influence of the Young Irelanders was more 
apparent than real, for when the apjDeal to arms was 
actually made it proved absolutely impotent against 
the 23rinciples with which O'Connell had leavened the 
people. This dissension, however, greatly injured the 
Eepeal cause. One of those reactions of despondency 
to which all popular movements are liable began, and 
the disputes about the Federal scheme in 1844 still 
further weakened the popular enthusiasm. 

These disputes preyed greatly on O'Connell's mind, 
and the period that followed his release presents a 
confused and chaotic picture, very unlike that of 
former years. His health suddenly gave way. Cease- 
less labour and excessive care had broken a constitution 
that was naturally of Herculean strength. His voice, 
which had once pealed with such thrilling power over 
assembled thousands, sank into an almost inaudible 
whisper. His hopes, which had once been so buoyant 
that they rose above all obstacles, began now to fail. 
Famine came with fearful rapidity upon the land, and 
O'Connell foresaw the evil, while he could not avert it. 
The chill of death was upon him — the certainty of 
failure wrung his soul witli an agony the more bitter 
because of the sanguine hope that had preceded it. 
An iinutterable, xm mitigated gloom sank upon his 
mind, and withered and destro^^ed his energies. Weak 



GOES TO ITALY. 319 

and prostrate in liealth and hoj^e, he attended for the 
last time that Legislature which he had so triumphantly 
entered. In a speech of simple and touching eloquence, 
entirely free from every tinge of his ancient violence, 
lie showed the fearful magnitude of the calamity im- 
pending over the country, suggested his remedies, and 
with a solemn and heartfelt pathos implored the gene- 
rous aid of Parliament. But his voice was so faint that 
but few could catch his words. The fearful change 
impressed all who saw him.' Old rancour and party 
sj)irit were forgotten at the spectacle of so great a 
sorrow. He was listened to with an almost reverential 
silence, and followed by many evidences of pity and of 
respect. Statesmen of all parties testified their sym- 
pathy by their enquiries. The Queen, with a graceful 
kindness that shovdd never be forgotten, sent to ask 
after the dying agitator. Another visit he received in 
those last dark days which he must have valued still 
more — three of the Oxford converts to Eome came to 
assure him that it was his career that had first directed 
their attention to the theology of his Church. 

Eeligion was indeed now the only solace of his mind. 
In his yoiith he had been dissipated and immoral ; but 
a change had passed over him, it is said, about the 
time of his duel with d'Esterre, and his attachment to 
his religion was sincere and fervent. His physicians 
having ordered him abroad, he resolved to draw his 
last breath near tlie tombs of the Apostles in that great 
city which is the metropolis of his Church. The deep 
melancholy which the consciousness of the famine im- 
pending over his country produced attended him on 
tliat dreary journey. ' He seemed,' said one who 
visited him in France, ' to be a continued prey to sad 

' Sco the very toucliing description in Ditraoli's 'Life of Lord J. 
TScntinck.' 



320 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

reflections. His face had grown thin, and his look 
proclaimed an inexpressible sadness : the head hung 
upon the breast, and the entire person of the invalid, 
formerly so imposing, was greatly weighed down.' 
His strength failed him when he arrived at Genoa, and 
in that city he expired on May 15, 1847. 

He bequeathed his body to Ireland and his heart to 
the Eternal City. The former rests in the cemetery 
of Glasnevin, in the vicinity of Dublin ; the latter near 
the tomb of Lascaris, in the church of St. Agatha, at 
Eome. 

There is something almost awful in so dark a close 
of so brilliant a career. The more I dwell upon the 
subject, the more I am convinced of the splendour and 
originality of the genius and of the sterling character 
of the patriotism of O'Connell, in spite of the calumnies 
that surround his memory, and the many and grievous 
faults that obscured his life. But when to the great 
services he rendered to his country we oppose the 
sectarian and class warfare that resulted from his 
policy, the fearful elements of discord he evoked, and 
which he alone could in some degree control, it may 
be questioned whether his life was a blessing or a curse 
to Ireland. 



THE END. 



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This work is iin epitome of those branches of law which affect the ordinary transactions 
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In preparing it, the aim has been to set forth, in plain langitage, the rules 
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ENCES TO TUE VOLUMES WHEKE TUE CASES MAY BE FOUND. 

NEW YORK ILLUSTRATED ; with Fifty-nine II- 

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THE IS'OYELS AND NOVELISTS OF THE 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. In Illustration of the Manners and 
Morals of the Age. By William Forsyth, M. A., Q. C. 1 vol., 
12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. 

Mr. Forsyth, in his Instructive and entertaining' volume, has succeeded in showing 
that much real information concerninjj the morals as well as the manners of our ances- 
tors may be gathered from the novelists of the last century. With judicial impartiality 
ho examines and cross-examines the witnesses, laying all the evidence before the reader. 
Essayists as well as novelists are called up. The Spectator, The Tatler, The World, 
The Connoisseur, add confirmation strong' to the testimony of Parson Adams, Trulliber, 
Trunnion, Squire Western, the "Fool of Quality," "Betsey Thoughtless," and the like. 
A chapter on dress is suggestive of comparison. Costume is a subject on which novel- 
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KEMINISCENCES OF FIFTY YEARS. By Makk 

Boyd. 1 vol., 12mo, 390 pp. Price, $1.75. 

Mr. Boyd has seen much of life at home and abroad. He has enjoyed the acquaint- 
ance or friendship of many illustrious men, and he has the additional advantage of re- 
membering a number of anecdotes told by his father, who possessed a retentive memory 
and a wide circle of distinguished friends. The book, as the writer acknowledges, is a 
perfect oUa podrkla. There is considerable variety in the anecdotes. Some relate to 
great generals, like the Duke of Wellington and Lord Clyde; some to artists and men 
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Roberts ; some to statesmen, and, among others, to Pitt, who was a friend of Mr. Boyd's 
father, to Lords Palmerston, Brougham, and Derby ; some to discoverers, like Sir John 
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most amusing in the volume — to persons wholly unknown to fame, or to manners and 
customs now happily obsolete. 

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE FOR UNSCIEN- 
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Prof. Tyndall is the Poet op Modern Science. 
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most eloquent and attractive of writers. In this volume he goes over a large range of 
scientific questions, giving us the latest -views in the most lucid and graphic langu.age, 
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scopic perspective. Though a disciplined scientific thinker, Prof Tyndall is also a poet, 
alive to all beauty, and kindles into a glow of enthusiasm at the harmonies and wonders 
of Nature which he sees on every side. To him science is no mere dry inventory of 
prosaic facts, but a disclosure of the Divine order of the world, and fitted to stir the 
highest feelings of om- nature. 

GABRIELLE ANDRfi. An Historical Novel. By 

S. Baring-Gould, author of " Myths of the Middle Ages." 1 vol., 
8vo. Paper covers. Price, 60 cents. 

Those who take an interest in comparing the effects of the present French Revolu- 
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MUSINGS OYER THE CHRISTIAN" YEAR AND 

LYRA INNOCENTIUM. By Charlotte Mary Yoxge, together 
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1 vol. Thick 12mo, 431 pages. Price, $2.00. 

Miss Yonfie has here produced a volume which will possess great interest in the 
eyes of Churchmen, who liavc for so many years enjoyed the privilege of reading the 
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own experience of the uninterrupted intercourse of thirty years ; then there are the 
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l!ev. T. Simpson Evans; then follow the '-Musings," one each of the poems illusti-ativo 
of the " Christian Year anci Lyra Innocentium." 

THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE. By Chaelotte M. 

YoNGE. A New Illustrated Edition. 2 vols., 12mo. Cloth. Price, 
$2.00. 
To be followed by HEARTSEASE. 

" The tirst of her writings which made a sensation here was the ' Heir, and what a 
sensation it was ! deferring to the remains of the tear-washed covers of tht copy afore- 
said, we find it belonged to the 'eighth thousand.' How many thousands liave been 
Issued since by the publishers, to supply the demand for new, and the pUices of drowned, 
dissolved, or swept away old copies, wo do not attempt to conjectuie. Not individuals 
merely, but households — consisting in great part of tender-hearted young damsels — were 
plunged into mourning. With a tolerable acquaintance with fictitious heroes (not to 
speak of real ones), from Sir Charles Grandison down to the nursery idol, Carlton, wo 
have little hesitation in pronouncing Sir Guy Morville, or Kedclyffe, Baronet, the most 
admirable one we ever met with, in story or out. The glorious, joyous boy, the brilliant, 
trdent child of genius and of fortune, crowned with the beauty of his early holiness, and 
livershadowed with the darkness of his hereditary gloom, and the soft and touching sad- 
ness of his early death — what a caution is there ! What a vision ! " — Extract from a re- 
^^ew of " The Heir of Eedclyffe," and " Heartsease," ia the North American Jieviett 
lor April. 

A COMPREHENSIYE DICTIONARY OF THE 

BIBLE ; mainly abridged from Dr. William Smith's " Dictionary of 
the Bible," but comprising important Additions and Improvements 
from the Works of Robinson, Gesenius, Furst, Pape, Pott, Winer, 
Keil, Lange, Kitto, Fairbairn, Alexander, Barnes, Bush, Thomson, 
Stanley, Porter, Tristram, King, Ayro, and many other eminent 
scholars, commentators, travellers, and authors in various depart- 
ments. Designed to be a Complete Guide in regard to the Pronun- 
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ficulties respecting the Interpretation, Authority, and Harmony of 
the Old and New Testaments ; the History and Description of Bib- 
lical Customs, Events, Places, Persons, Animals, Plants, Minerals, 
and other things concerning which information is needed for an in- 
telligent and thorough study of the Holy Scriptures, and of the 
Books of the Apocrypha. Illustrated with Five Hundred Maps and 
Engravings. Edited by Rev. Samuel W. Barndm. Complete in 
one large royal octavo volume of 1,234 pages. Price, in cloth bind- 
ing, $5.00 ; in library sheep, $6.00 ; in half .norocco, $7.50. 



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LIGHT AISTD ELECTRICITY. :N'otes of Two 

Courses of Lectures before the Royal Institution of Great Britain. 
By John Tyndall, LL. D., F. R. S. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, 

$1.25. 

'■ For the benefit of those who .ittended his Lectures on Light and Electricity at the 
Koyal Institution, Prof. Tyndall prepared with much care a series of notes, summinif up 
briefly and clearly the leading facts and principles of these sciences. The notes proved 
so serviceable to those for whom they were designed that they were widely sought by 
students and teachers, and Prof Tyndall had them reprinted m two small books. Under 
the conviction that they will be equally appreciated by instructors and learners in this 
country, they are here combined and republished in a suig-le volume." — Extract from 
Preface. 

THE DESCENT OF MAK AND SELECTION 

IN RELATION TO SEX. By Charles Darwin, M. A. With 
Illustrations. 2 vols., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $4.00. 

'•We can find no fault with Mr. Darwin's facts, or the application of them." — TJiica 
Herald. 

" The theory is now indorsed by many eminent scientists, who at first combated it, 
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Bulletin. 

ON THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. Bj St. 

George Mivart, F. R. S. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth, with lUustrations. 
Price, Sl.YS. 

'• Mr. Mivart has succeeded in producing a work which -will cle.ir the ideas of biolo ■ 
gists and theologians, and which treats the most delicate questions in a manner which 
throws light upon most of them, and tears away the b.arriers of intolerance on each 
Bide." — British Medical Journal. 

MARQEIS AND MERCHANT. A Novel. By 

Mortimer Collins. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper covers. Price, 50 cents. 

" We ■will not compare Mr. Collins, as a novelist, with Mr. Disraeli, but, nevertheless, 
the qualities which have made Mr. Disraeli's fictions so widely popular are to be found 
in no small degree in the pages of the author of ' Marquis and Merchant.' " — Times. 

HEARTSEASE. A Novel. By the author of the 

" Heir of Rcdclyffe." An Illustrated Edition. 2 vols., 12mo. Price, 

S2.00. 

This is the second of the series of Miss Tonge's novels, now being issued in a new 
and beautiful style wi :h illustrations. Since this novel was first published anew genera- 
tion of readers have appeared. Nothing in the English language can equal the delinea- 
tion of character which she so beautifully portrays. 

WHAT TO READ, AND HOW TO READ, 

being Classified Lists of Choice Reading, with appropriate hints 
and remarks, adapted to the general reader, to subscribers, to li- 
braries, and to persons intending to form collections of books. 
Brought down to September, 1870. By Charles H. Moore, M. D. 
1 vol., 12mo. Paper Covers, 50 cents. Cloth. Price, 75 cents. 



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